Breathe
by Nashiko
Summary: Hermione Granger just can't do it. She can't marry Ron. In her bout of self-medication, someone from her past offers to teach her a new way of thinking. Post-Hogwarts. HBP Compliant. SS/HG. Rated M. BDSM
1. Nobody tells you how to leave

**A/N** : _I don't own this world, or the beautiful characters in it. They are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling and are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only. And maybe some therapeutic purposes._

 _This story strives_ its _best to be canon compliant, except for 2 changes: Snape's obvious survival, and The Epilogue. Let's forget that it ever happened, and pick up somewhere in the middle, shall we?_

 _Though I have had it beta'd (without whom this story would still be dead in the water), I always appreciate a keen eye for any mistakes. I apologize for them in advance._

* * *

The dress was satin. Not what she would have picked, but it made both her mother and Mrs. Weasley happy. Simple, clean and structured with delicate flowers of hand sewn crystals which she planned to charm to sparkle when the lights were dimmed. The few Muggles who would bother to attend the impending nuptials already knew her secret. This was her way to honor to both families. A Muggle wedding gown with touches of wizardry.

She stood in front of the mirror, her wand over her shoulder pointed at her back, attempting to self-lace the corset bodice. She stared at herself. A frizzy mass powered by hormones, stress and a heavy English humidity tumbled over her shoulders. Deep pools of honey with an edge of fear stared back at her. This was The Dress. The Only Dress That Mattered. The Last Dress She'd Ever Wear. She would give herself over to Ronald Weasley in this dress. She would become one of the flame-haired clan that had taken her in time and time again. She would be hugged by Mr. and Mrs. Weasley- Arthur and Molly, she corrected herself- not as one of their sons' friends, not as 'that bushy haired possible-girlfriend of Harry Potter', but as her own, soon-to-be Weasley self.

The dress made her skin hot, and not for the first time. The anxiety rose quickly and road her slowly, starting in the pit of her stomach. This was The Dress. The Only Dress That Mattered. The Last Dress She'd Ever Wear, and she was drowning.

It wasn't just the dress. When Ron has proposed some ten months previous, she accepted with an air of muted joy. Of course she was happy, she told herself as he placed the heirloom ring that had once belonged to Mr - Arthur's - great-grandmother on her finger. Of course she was. She loved him. Right? Yes. Of course she loved him. She had to. Those wild kisses after the war. Those nights spent crying in each other's arms. Nights spent wide-eyed remembering the Horcrux that hung like lead around their necks. That's what love was. Why else would she have put up with ten months of wedding planning with Molly and her Mother. What did she care of table settings, table runners, Save the Dates (both enchanted and not enchanted) and flower arrangements.

She clutched at the skirts of the dress, her palms sweaty against the satin. She didn't give a single bloody damn about table runners or settings or dates or flowers. Not a single bloody damn. She breathed, placed her wand back on the side table, and stood as straight backed as she could. It was a pretty gown. Simple and elegant. The only piece of this bloody affair that felt like any semblance of her, and yet it made her choke. She tried to steady herself, letting go of the skirts and tilting her chin upward in the mirror.

"Keep Breathing, Granger." She said to the reflection.

That's all there was to do. Power through it. Learn to love it. Stiff upper lip and all that.

 _Come, on, Granger._

Satin, noun. a smooth, glossy fabric, typically of silk, produced by a weave in which the threads of the warp are caught and looped by the weft only at certain intervals. Just cloth. Woven and cut into a dress.

Cut into a dress.

Cut.

"Cut me out of this thing." She pleaded to the empty room.

There wasn't enough oxygen to sustain a fire in the room. It was gone with a woosh and she fell to her knees, hands clawing at the bodice.

 _No._

 _No_

No _I can't do this. No._

She pointed a wand and the spell that left her lips was the one to untie her, not to slash the thing into a thousand threads at once. It was going to be painful enough without being able to sell the thing back.

* * *

"Ronald…"

She hadn't meant to use his given name. It was supposed to be reserved for when she was furious with him. It was a weapon, never to be used at moments like this. Nothing would soften this blow. Nothing. For either of them, but she resolved to be as kind as possible.

"What have I done now?" He said, exasperation thick in his voice. Not that he had any real reason to be, she noted. He wasn't the one who had spent hours trying to mediate between their mothers about why her great-aunt Beatrice should be closer to the sweetheart's table.

"Nothing, Ron...I'm...I'm sorry. We need to talk."

In hindsight, the conversation went as well as it could have. He was furious, at first, the tips of his freckled ears redder than his hair. His fists shaking as he swung into the clock on the mantle. She stood back as he smashed the next nearest object, a Muggle photograph of the two of them with Harry and Ginny that Colin Creevy had managed to sneak of the four of them during their 4th year, during one of the few moments Ron wasn't in a complete snit about Harry-The-Chosen-One-Potter and his complete luck at being tossed into the wolf pit.

He had watched it fall and crack straight down the middle, dividing her and Harry in one clean go. She watched the anger leak from him and he shook his head, telling her he had a feeling. That surprised her. His emotional range seemed to have grown to at least a cup. He didn't have the words ready, but she knew what they would have been. Disappointed, relieved, hurt, resigned, and maybe even a touch of something more complicated that even she didn't seem to have the word for either.

They looked at each other for a long time, after the words were said. Nobody tells you how to leave. There were books on keeping and fixing this thing she had just ended, but nobody ever really told you how to leave. Nobody told you about how to handle shared incomes or who would get the flat and who would tell the parents. Nobody warned you of the anger from everyone else who had no right to say anything but always did.

Of course they all said something. Ginny was morose, but understanding. The brothers ranged from furious to mildly relieved. "It would have been bad for both of you, had you gone through with it. It's probably for the best." Bill had said. George had been less-than-kind, but Hermione understood why. He would apologize later. The Weasley parents had taken it down the middle. Mrs Weasley, furious at being denied a wedding, called her an "ill-bred trollip who didn't know a damn thing about anything outside of a leather tome." Mr. Weasley had been more kind, though obviously upset at the emotional distress his son was going through. They would both also apologize, much later.

* * *

When she found herself seated in the corner of a Muggle bar, a book propped open on a large mason jar, fingers traced ancient runes into the condensation on the side of her expensive-but-who-gives-a-damn three fingers of Scotch, she wasn't too surprised at the utterly hollow feeling.

What did surprise her, was the last thing she expected.

"What on earth are you doing here, Miss Granger?"

 _That Voice._

No, that voice was dead. Obviously there was mugwort in the scotch. Auditory hallucinations were a side effect, especially mixed with alcohol. She looked up slowly.

"No." She said simply. "No, you're dead, and I've obviously had far too much to drink."

"Stupid girl." The voice sneered.

Her eyes took in the thin, solid wall of black standing in front of her table. The familiar darkness that caused her copious amounts of anxiety wasn't made of its infamous worn wool and cut into a frock coat. No, this wall of black was cut into an expensive looking Muggle suit. A matching dress shirt buttoned to the top, monochrome tie with some pattern she couldn't make out in the dim light of the bar. A sheet of raven hair, framing a deathly pale thin face. Eyes of purest pitch, hooded, but not nearly as sickly looking as she remembered.

She cocked an eyebrow. "No. You are dead, and I am drunk, because why else would Ex-Professor-Dead-As-A-Doornail-Snape be standing before me in a Muggle suit in a Muggle bar in Muggle London, having the absolute gall to look like he hasn't been to the Ninth Circle of Hell."

Those damn black eyes had the nerve to narrow at her. "Don't make me repeat myself." His voice commanded. "Aren't you due to be wed shortly? What on earth are you doing here without your-" He paused, taking time to coat the word with ample distaste "paramour."

"How do you even know that? You are a dead man. Why am I even talking to you?" The last a statement as she downed the last of her scotch in an effort to do something, anything other than acknowledge that Snape was alive.

He pulled out the wooden chair opposite her, and sat. Long legs stretched under the table, crossed at the ankles. Now she knew she was hallucinating. "One cannot walk into a wizarding establishment and NOT hear about the impending nuptials." The distaste was still there, though fading.

"How are you even walking into wizarding establishments? People think you're DEAD."

He shrugged. The casual gesture surprised her. "I never said in London."

"Well, obviously, the news mustn't have made it to Wizarding China yet. There will be no-" She paused, and tried to coat the word with an appropriate level of mocking distaste. "nuptials."

"Such sass, Miss Granger." He cocked an eyebrow in surprise.

"Why are you even here?" Her question was soft. "We watched you die."

The corners of his lips twitched. The small gesture surprising her even more. "You did. My heart did indeed stop."

"Then why-" She was cut off by the waitress coming over with another round of scotch, unbidden. The short glass with a sphere of ice in the middle clinked as it hit the table.

"Does it matter?" He asked, head tilted as he watched her pick up the glass and hold it to her lips.

"I suppose not, no. You are obviously not dead." She sipped slowly, her lipstick marking the glass. She placed it back on the table and slid it to him, the lipstick turned to her.

He nodded in thanks as he picked up the glass. His obscene nose took in the bouquet "Muggle. Macallan?"

"And you know your Muggle scotch. How apropos."

The dark man shook his head. "Always the know-it-all."

It was her turn to shrug. "If I'm going to self-medicate, I'm not going to do it with blended garbage."

He barked a short laugh. He lifted the glass to his lips, lipstick away, and took a sip of the scotch. "Twelve year."

"Why are you here." It came as a statement, not a question.

"Free scotch." He said simply as he slid the glass back to her.

"Why are you even here." She said again. Her head was light and her gut warm with alcohol. She shook her head. "You know what? I don't really care. You aren't going to answer my questions because you're actually still dead and you're still a right mean bastard." she lifted the glass as if to toast. "Congratulations on your acquisition of a new corporeal form to torture me further. Because six years wasn't enough, was it. No, Severus Snape would see fit to dig the knife just a little bit deeper wouldn't he?" She took another gulp of the amber liquid.

"Will you shut your mouth, you belligerent idiot girl, for roughly five minutes?" The bitter sneer in his voice was a comfort. This was familiar ground. It felt good to be on familiar ground.

She paused, the glass to her lips again, mid sip.

He dug into the hidden pocket of his suit jacket and pulled from it a Muggle business card. He thrust it across the table. "When you sober up, call."

* * *

She woke up alone in the bed they had shared. The lingering smell of spearmint toothpaste and that cloying clean musky smell that was Ron Weasley's fire engine hair ripping something inside her chest. She threw herself upright, away from the spectral remains of him.

The hangover crashed through her head, rolling her stomach into a gordian knot. Bare feet padded into the bathroom and she assumed the proper position for those repentant sinners who prayed to the porcelain gods. Dear deities of drink, we accept our punishment for trying to drown out our feelings in overpriced spirits. Accept our offerings of empty stomachs and regret. We repent. We regret. We beg your forgiveness.

Sufficiently emptied, she pulled herself up to her feet and looked in the mirror. The tracks of salt still remained on her face, the mascara she had worn smudged in a mask around her eyes. Vanity long gone when in the throws of drink she realized she had thrown away the one thing she had ever truly loved.

 _Truly?_

Yes. And that was what all the fuss was about.

Padding back into the bedroom, she noted the strangeness of his things being wiped clean of her existence. The dust outlines the only proof he had ever lived here. Everything hurt. Her eyes, her head, her heart. Unable to stand it, she striped the duvet from the bed and wrapped it around her. The down armor not much against the ache in her bones.

The disaster of her return home laid in a trail from the front door of the flat to the doorway of her bedroom. Shoes, hose, keys, the clutch, the dress, little soldiers lined the last march of shame. She picked up everything and piled it high in her her duvet cover arms before throwing herself onto the settee.

Nobody told you how to leave. Nobody told you of the ghosts that lingered behind when you kept the flat. No books on exorcism, no wards to keep them out. She wished for a moment the ghost was real. Then at least she could have spoken to it and asked it to haunt somewhere else.

She tossed the clutch onto the coffee table. Its contents expelled across the lightly scuffed glass surface. A tube of two year old lipstick rolled unceremoniously across the table, clattering on the floor. The black business card sliding across the surface, stopping short of the edge. The satin sheen of the card stock catching her eye. So that wasn't a hallucination.

Disgust swelled up like a wave as her brain conjured up the rest of it. The look of resignation in those distant black eyes as she finally spilled why she was there. The gracious glance away as a stray tear escaped its prison. Those long elegant fingers hailing her a cab. Those same fingers closing tightly around her arm as she was unceremoniously dumped from it in front of her building. He had said something as she stumbled out of the cab, though the words were lost to the drink. She had gotten blackout drunk in front of the one man who would probably never let her live it down. A dead man who would taunt her forever.

It wasn't a dream. She picked up the card, her thumb running across it like a worry stone. To the naked, hungover eye, it seemed blank if not for an embossed elegant black S in the center. Serif, she noted. Classic. Understated. She fumbled between the couch cushions for her wand and tapped it once. Obediently, the card revealed a Muggle phone number. She nearly laughed at the irony of magically concealing a Muggle phone number, but really what else could she have expected from the Half-Blood Prince.

What else was there to lose? Dignity was already gone, and the damnable smell of Ronald Bilius Weasley haunted her here. Faintly on the duvet she used to ward herself from the outside world, in the cushions of the couch, in the warm squishy armchair near the mantle. A new wave of nausea overtook her as a light tap came from the window.

Of course. She wondered how long it would take for Harry to check in on her. She opened the window and the small barn owl hopped into the perch on the side table.

"Floo me." the note said. Honestly, Harry.

She tossed some powder from the jar on the mantle into the not-quite-functional fireplace. She heard the bustle past the flames before Harry's face appeared in them, a pained look on his face. "You left." He said simply.

"I left." She confirmed. Something cracked again, and she wondered if she would ever be an adult human who wasn't triggered to tears at every change of the winds ever again.

"Gin told me last night. We tried the floo but you were out?" A faint hint of disapproval in his voice.

"I was out." This was going to be trying. She was thrilled her friend cared enough to check in on her, but she was aggravated. She knew Ron was the first to get all of the comfort. The one he ran to first. The one that wouldn't get scolded for drowning his sorrows in whatever cheap ale he could scrounge up. She bit the inside of her cheek. "I needed to get out of here. He's still here, and I couldn't take it."

Harry paused for a moment, trying to understand what she meant. "Oh." he said finally, the sad jut of his lip and the line between his brows giving away his age. Despite being 26, he looked older, even in the distorted green of the flames. "Hermione, listen, I'm really sorry."

"I am too. You know, you don't exactly go on about your day expecting to realize everything you thought your future would be is actually utter rubbish and would make you utterly miserable. I didn't exactly plan to lead us both down this path. It's just something we thought we had to do and I-I couldn't do it, Harry." Her voice strained with the effort to keep herself together. That thing inside her cracked yet again, straining under the weight of what she had done.

Harry looked away from the flames for a moment. She assumed Ginny was listening off to the side, and he was looking to her for guidance. "We thought so too. Though I can't exactly say it is a total surprise. You two are-very different."

She barked a humorless laugh. The understatement of the century. They weren't just different, they were diametrically opposed. She wanted a kid, maybe two. Maybe someday. He wanted a quidditch team tomorrow. She wanted to put her N.E. to good use, he wanted to quit the Auror office to run a blasted joke shop. Phah. The search for the Horcruxes has been hard on him indeed. He hadn't been there for half of it. The bitter bile of remembrance nearly choked her. She shoved it down, desperate not to turn this into something else. Something ugly, though she felt it inside like a parasite. Maybe later, she would sooth it, but not yet. Not now. There was still a clean getaway to make.

"We are. I'm more upset at myself for it having taken this long to see it. Tell Ginny I'm sorry-and the rest of them, will you? Ron spoke to them already, but it doesn't quite seem right for me to talk to them just yet."

Harry nodded "Of course I will. Hey, Hermione? If you need anything, let us know ok? Ginny too. She is still your friend, and still loves you."

Of course she did. Something she didn't quite deserve for shattering the life of her brother. "Thank you, Harry. Listen, I've got to go. There is a lot here I need to clean up, and if I stop for too long I'm afraid I'll do something stupid."

Harry smiled at that. "Hermione Granger, do something stupid? Not in this lifetime."

Oh, ye of too much faith, Harry Potter. Ye of too much faith.

She sat on the settee, staring at the Muggle phone number on the card for the hundredth time that day. She looked back to the old rotary phone mounted on the wall of the kitchen. The thing a gem, hidden in the back of an old Muggle charity shop near the Ministry. She had brought it home thrilled, leaving Ron completely confused. Why would they need a fellytone, he had asked? The floo connected them right to their family and to Harry.

To his family, she reminded him. Her family was only reachable by telephone, because the Ministry wouldn't make an exception to the floo network. Not even for a war hero. The phone, old enough that their magic didn't interfere with any delicate circuitry, was the one obvious Muggle link to her family. When she found them and restored their memories, she vowed never to cut them off from her again. The phone was her promise, she said.

He never understood it, and always jumped when the shrill mechanical ring filled the flat.

She looked at the card again for the one hundred and first time. What in heaven's name could a surprisingly alive Severus Snape want with her.

She shrugged, finally peeling herself away from her self imposed exile of the cushions. She laughed, hysteria playing around the edges. There was literally nothing to lose. Shaky fingers rolled the dial around, calling the number.

"It took you this long to sober up, did it?" That voice. Like deep tobacco rolled in velvet. Wood aged Fire Whiskey and honey. A touch of mirth played around the edges. It knocked her off balance.

"I don't always go through half a bottle of scotch, sir." She said lightly. The honorific automatically making its return. Old habits died hard, apparently, in the sober light of day. "Imagine my surprise when I wake up with a hangover worthy of a chocolate frog card and find out you are, indeed, alive."

An exasperated sigh was her answer.

"Yes yes, we did this yesterday, sir. Though admittedly I don't recall you telling me why you tracked me down."

A pause. A beat. She snagged her bottom lip between her teeth, gnawing at the flesh of it.

"Because, unfortunately, you have always been good at your job." The sneer evident. It had cost much for him to say it.

As a child, just as her magic began to manifest, praise from teachers would literally make her glow. She would light up like a Christmas tree, lights dancing under her skin in playful waves. She cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she glanced down at her forearms. No lights. Damn if it didn't feel like it.

"Get a hold of yourself, Ms. Granger, I can hear you vibrating from across the city."

So he was still in town.

"Shall we cut to the proverbial chase, then?"

Some rich, deep rumble echoed in her ears and she realized he had laughed. An astounding sound she wasn't sure anyone in the wizarding world had ever heard. "You are one of two N.E. level arithmancers currently not employed at Hogwarts or Gringotts, and I am in need of a cost-benefit analysis."

She blinked. "And why me, sir?"

"I will not repeat myself, Ms. Granger." The hard edge was back. Good. She knew how to deal with angry Snape. Angry Snape was a childhood comfort.

"Of course, sir. However, I am currently employed by the Ministry." She stretched the cord of the phone as far as it could go, digging into a drawer for a scrap of parchment and a self-inking quill.

"Doing what, exactly, Ms. Granger?"

She froze. A desk gig at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures wasn't exactly impressive. Though she was doing her damndest to get Jacob Manderly in the Being division to take up the cause of reclassifying House Elves. She would get him to listen to her, whether he wanted to or not. No one could avoid Hermione Jean Granger when she was on a mission. Her silence stretched longer than she wanted. The footing lost.

"As expected. How the mighty war heros are greeted when they return home."

Now he was being nasty. Her face reddened and she laid the quill back down on the counter. "What cost-benefit analysis, sir?"

"You will be given the specifics when you accept the offer."

"You haven't actually made an offer, sir." She ground out.

"Perhaps I should clarify, as it seems that unruly hair of yours has impaired your critical thinking skills. You are going to do this analysis for me, Ms. Granger, because you owe me."

Her breath caught in her chest. Of course she did. They had let him die. Harry watched his heart stop. Harry had seen the blood and venom trickle from his neck before watching his last breath leave his body. They watched Harry, rubbing tears and soot from his eyes as he held the small vial with Snape's memories after the fight. She had taken it in her hands, amazed that such a man could contain such things. Those beautiful tendrils of light floating in that tiny glass vial. She dived into those memories without hesitation when given the chance. Her heart caved in as she gorged on them. Even she was weak against such tragic romance.

She carried those memories when Ron asked her to marry him. When she wanted to leave and didn't. When they fought and she gave in. Severus Snape had given them the key that saved them all. That horrible, broken man had contained an unearthly amount of love. So why shouldn't she? Why shouldn't she try?

She wasn't sure now if she wanted to blame him or not for it. One thing she knew for sure was she did owe him. They all did. They owed him more than the wizarding world had given him. A fuss when Harry petitioned to have his portrait placed in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts. Protests when the three of them requested his name be added to the list of The Fallen on the memorial in the ministry. Her own personal failure; being unable to stop Rita Skeeter from publishing that torrid account of his life. She owed him for that, at the very least.

"Alright." She said finally. "I'll do it, sir."

"Of course you will."


	2. Graceless desperation

**A/N:** _This story went from sitting in my drive for years, to getting 2 chapters in a very short amount of time. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time out to read it, and leave comments. I'll probably be in need of another beta at this rate, so if anyone is interested/willing in being subjected to my bad grammar and odd word choices, feel free to drop me a message._

 _As always, not my world or characters. I'm just playing in the sandbox_.

* * *

Hermione sat on one of the benches outside The Red Lion, a Muggle pub not far from one of the main entrances to the Ministry of Magic. Her hair brushed back smartly from her face, contained in a sharp bun, a stray quill shoved through it. One earbud in her ear, connected to a cheap off brand small Muggle digital music player shoved unceremoniously into her jacket pocket. A book balanced on her crossed thigh, her foot jingling a nervous tremor as she waited for him.

Terror danced around her twitching foot, in her gut, and behind her eyes. Fear of him. Of what he wanted. Of what could possibly come of this. He may have been a secret romantic sop, but he was an incredibly dangerous man. A man no one else knew, as far as she was aware, was still alive. She'd resolved to find out the answer to that question at the very least.

It would do her no good to look like a twitching terrified forest creature. She began a series of arithmatic equations in her head, desperate to follow the numbers and imaginary vectors instead of letting the anxiety take her. Get a grip, Granger. Breathe.

She seemed to be reminding herself of that a lot, lately.

A shadow cast across her book and she looked up. She slammed the fear down. He was no ghost, and she was not afraid.

Clad in smart black slacks, a white Muggle dress shirt, a black tie, and a simple tailored black jacket, Severus Snape looked down at her. The corner of his lip twitched as she raised an eyebrow in surprise. The effect of seeing a dead man, alive, was even more striking in the light of day. All monochrome and slim hips, the sheen of his raven hair different than she remembered. He looked-good. Healthy. Like someone had finally managed to get him to sit still and eat. Like he had taken several long hot showers. Like he finally caught up on several years of sleep. Not like a dead man. He was by no means traditionally handsome, what with that ridiculous aquiline nose and those unfortunate teeth.

"You seem to have improved your notion of what a discreet meeting means," he said mildly.

She smiled at the memory. Of course meeting in the shadiest of establishments for her super secret club of academic rebels was a great way to be discreet, her younger self thought. Nobody but creepy adult people doing creepy adult things go there, of course it will be safe for a group of school children.

"I like to think I've learned something, sir," she said; taking the earbud out her ear and shoving it into her pocket, before closing the book on her thigh.

"One should hope so," he said, taking a seat next to her. Long legs crossed at the ankles.

She glanced at him as he spoke. Those unfortunate teeth seemed only slightly less so. Being the daughter of dentists was always a strange thing. "How can I help you, Pro-sir?" The old title pure reflex. Too many ingrained habits. Too many old triggers.

"I won't waste your precious bureaucratic issued break time with the minutiae. I need to know if I can go back." His gaze fixed somewhere off in the distance, watching the Muggle tourists and office workers pound the pavement.

"I'm sorry-what?" she stammered.

"Is it worthwhile for me to be alive in our world, Ms. Granger." It was flat, neutral. Cloaked in years worth of Occlumency and spycraft. He might have asked her if it was going to rain that afternoon.

She watched his face for a moment, desperate to find some kind of tell. A giveaway. Something that would explain his sudden re-emergence and this strange request.

"I do not think I need to emphasize that no one should know of our meeting? Not even your two little friends?"

"Of course not, sir. I didn't think it pertinent that they know how we met, in any case."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "I doubt they would believe you were drinking alone anyway."

She looked off to the sea of people walking along the sidewalk. A tour group crossed the street, the little white flag on a pole the beacon in the distance to the stragglers in the back. "Isn't this more of a philosophical question, sir?"

"To a point. Public sentiment is mixed, and I am unsure if it is worth my time. I have managed to carve out a comfortable existence elsewhere, but there are things being able to move about freely here would make easier. I need to know if it is worthwhile. You will figure out the probability percentage."

She stole another quick glance at him before crossing her arms across her chest, bottom lip once again victim to her nervous habits. "That will be quite a bit of work, sir. You will need to be present for some of the calculations to provide context and variables."

"You can work at The Loft. I will be in town for another week. That should be sufficient time. The address is under the 2nd layer of enchantments on the card I gave you."

Questions tumbled in her head, but she knew by now who she was dealing with. Incessant questions would only lead her down a path that was further from all the answers she wanted. She hadn't even noticed the second layer of work on the card. "I can be there tonight."

A short nod of acknowledgment, before he rose to his feet again. His movements not quite as fluid as she remembered. "Tonight, then." He stepped into an oncoming group of Muggle tourists, and was gone. Too quick for her to follow even if she tried.

Tonight, then. Her head buzzed with it all the way back to her desk. The house elf initiative would have to wait. She silently apologized to all of them.

* * *

The Loft, as it turned out, was a converted warehouse. Seven floors, each with its own private residence. She took the large freight elevator to the top floor, tapping her wand to the gate. In mechanical obedience, it slid away to reveal a minimalist dream. Concrete and red brick walls, natural light filtered in through a set of filthy skylights. It smelled familiar; of wood smoke and brass. It smelled like the potions labs at Hogwarts.

This apparently wasn't a pleasure trip.

"In some circles, it is considered rude to lurk in freight elevators," he called from somewhere further inside.

Right foot first. An old Muggle superstition. One she hadn't thought about in years. Always step off a train or an elevator right foot first. That way you're always entering...well, on the right foot! Her grandfather's favorite. She tried explaining to him as a young girl the rubbish of such things, much to her parents simultaneous pride and chagrin. She stepped in, right foot first. It couldn't hurt. Anything to keep her footing.

"This is-impressive, sir," she called back, walking further into the space. She noticed a small kitchen set up directly to the right. The lack of walls created a strange flow to the place. No places to hide.

If there had been a living space once, there was no trace of it. He had filled the space with three long metal work tables, each in different stages of brewing.

"To the back, if you please."

And there he was, in all the glory she remembered. Those shirtsleeves rolled back, his hair in a lank curtain hiding his face from her. His back an arch over a massive cauldron as those elegant fingers grasped a stirring rod. A true master at his work. The sight sent that cracked thing in her chest to stirring with every rotation of the rod. Somewhere in it, she forgot to breathe.

He didn't look up from his work, gracious enough to let her enjoy the show for another moment while he finished. He leaned back from the cauldron, his hair falling away from his face. He looked exhausted. Much more like she remembered.

They didn't waste time. Thumbing through the materials, she tried desperately to focus on the task in front of her. Her own metal files marginally askew from the last few days. Frustration sprouted and she promptly dug it from its spot and burned it, eager to try again. And she did. Again, and again, and again.

By the fourth day, she had made no headway. Four nights spent in his workshop, with only three to spare. She growled in frustration and threw her quill across the table. The words rolled in her mouth and she refused to say them. She was going to fail him. Hermione Granger never failed. She wasn't built for it. Every cell in her body was designed from birth for absolute and complete victory in all things. The Princess of Gryffindor. The Brightest Witch of her Age. How was something so simple as a cost-benefit analysis so beyond her? Was she really so heartbroken? Was she suddenly so useless that her easy linear thinking so incapable of working through this?

The problem was complex. Too many variables. Too many players. Even when working with generalities, the strokes were too broad, too varied to boil them down to simple equations using what she knew. This was Masters level Arithmancy. Something she had always wanted, and yet here it was, slipping through her fingers. "I can't…" A white flag. Her voice so small she almost didn't hear herself say it.

"What did I say about mumbling, Ms. Granger," his voice was sharp. The patience he displayed finally at its end.

"I can't." Something bitter and brittle in the words. That cracked thing gasping its death rattle. She realized, distantly, that it was her heart.

"You can't what, Granger. Spit it out." Never afraid to dig the knife a little deeper, even if he didn't know he did it.

"I can't do this!" She gestured manically to the work in front of her. The sheets of parchment, the abacus, the runes, the broken quill. Evidence to verify her failure. "It's too much, and not enough time. I can only get so far with the usual methods, and it isn't enough!" Her breath came in ragged gasps. That cracked and broken heart beat it's last beat, and broke. Shattered into a thousand pieces. She had failed. Failed at so many things.

He sighed. "I am uninterested in your dramatics, Granger." Long fingers pinched the bridge of his nose "You and I both know this shouldn't be a problem for you. Do the job, then get out. If you can't fulfill the need I have for you, I have no use for you."

Of course not. That, of course, didn't make the rejection hurt any less. "I have done everything I know how! The calculations are textbook perfect, and yet every single vector is inconclusive. Or worse, bends backward in some catastrophic destruction."

He smiled then. Something vindictive and predatory. A hand went up to silence her. "The thing you lack and have always lacked, and quite possibly will lack for the rest of your life, is creativity. For as clever as you are, you lack originality. Everything you produce is textbook perfect. Textbook. There isn't a drop of yourself, your soul, in your work." He placed his palms flat on the work table between them. "There is no other Master's work to copy here. No textbook to follow. Finally, after years of being coddled by academia, you are free to do the work you have been craving, and yet you tell me you cannot? You can't deny it. You are all the same, Gryffindors." The word came out like a curse. "Your desires painted in broad, careless strokes all over you."

The agony of it was exquisite. Sharper and more clear than anything she had ever felt before. He cut to the quick, his words a scalpel wielded with master precision. She scrambled to find something. Anything in her mental files to combat with, and came up with nothing but fistfuls of dust. Nothing made sense in this chaos. Why call her then, if he knew. "Was there really no one else, then?" she demanded lamely. "One of two N.E. arithmancers, and yet my best is not good enough for you."

"Apparently not, which comes as something of a disappointment. You've learned absolutely nothing." He backed away, disgust plain on his face.

Nobody taught you how to leave. Nobody taught you how to accept defeat either. Nobody liked a sore loser, so you got better and better at hiding how much it hurt. Hermione never lost. The pain was raw and radiated in every nerve ending. It mixed with an old pain, something rotten and forgotten in that broken cracked space that was once her heart. Years of desperation for him just to see her. To see what she could do. He had finally seen it, and it still wasn't enough.

Everything crumbled. Tears welled in her eyes unbidden and she hated herself in that moment. Worse than she had ever hated anything. She hated it because she had taken worse damage. She had the scars on her forearm to prove it. Her mouth opened. "Teach me, then."

He arched an eyebrow in surprise. "What?"

"Do the job you were supposed to do, then! Teach me how to think differently. Teach. Me."

He barked a mirthless laugh. "It's not a-" and suddenly he stopped. Something stirred in the depths of those pitch eyes and she wanted desperately to dive into them and rip the answers out with her bare hands. "You know not of what you ask of me. Leave. Now."

"No. No, you do not get to barge into my life, make demands of me, tell me I'm not good enough, and then get me to disappear. No no no Snape, this is not how this works. You want this done? Then teach me to think like a master."

She couldn't recall a time when she had ever seen him visibly struggle with anything. A muscle in his neck twitched and some low, barely audible growl rumbled in his chest. She watched as he warred with something beyond temper and anger. Then, just as suddenly, his eyes softened, and he smiled. Some weird and wild thing lost between predatory and nostalgia.

"Twenty-Five years ago, I stood in front of a master, very much like you are now, and demanded the same thing. He said I was all 'graceless desperation and reckless abandon.'"

The words stopped her cold, all that self-righteous self-pity forgotten for the moment. This was something new. Some new, undiscovered species of Severus Snape. The word was shaky in her mouth, a breathless sigh. "Sir?"

He looked at her, then, and she was absolutely certain that no man had ever looked at her in such a way. She had no words for it, this confusing torrent that blew away what was left of her mental files. "It has been a long time, Ms. Granger, since I have been able to correct mistakes in the way I prefer."

"Teach me."

"No further questions. Hands in your lap. Do not speak. Do not move from the chair. If you can follow that order, I will consider it."

She blinked. A small nod her only movement.

He spun on his heel, returning to his work.

Why on earth had she agreed so readily to such a strange request? Maybe it was the look of contentment that washed over him as he gave the order. Maybe it was the way his eyes had shown her something so naked and desperate. This new Snape pushing all of the buttons that sent Hermione into quest mode. That euphoric, desperate mode that left her asleep in the library year after year. That fueled manic episodes of research until she had come across the scrap of information she craved. It was heady, and have mercy she missed it.

She opened her mouth to ask why. He turned around, his face blank as she closed it again, remembering her promise. The answering look of approval in his eyes enough to remind her why. She needed to learn why she couldn't get through a stupid post-N.E.W.T. arithmancy problem. To do what he had come for and repay the damn debt that filled that cracked and broken space in her chest.

In the silence, she fought the urge to fidget, suddenly filled to bursting with questions. What master taught him to think? From as early as his 6th year at Hogwarts, he had obviously been obsessively brilliant. Brilliant in ways that made her ache with jealousy. The Half-Blood Prince's book had been filled with creativity and originality. So what could he have possibly missed? She had a vague idea of what made him graceless and desperate. _Lily Potter_. That name a taboo, some terrible sacred thing she didn't like to think about. The woman who had inspired such devotion, she turned the tide of the war. Hermione always wondered what kind of woman could wield that kind of power. Though really, she knew it wasn't so much wielding as being. Just as Harry had inspired her own devotion, so did his mother.

Her eyes darted around the room, the prison of her mind too loud and filled with questions. No clock to see how long she had agreed to play this stupid game. The sun having sunk behind the horizon some time ago. Her stomach growled, and she cursed herself. It must have been well after 10:00pm. How long was she expected to sit in this horrible chair? But he stayed at his work. Unidentifiable seconds ticked by, and he didn't so much as acknowledge her there. She hadn't moved. At this point, more out of stubbornness than anything else. The desire for knowledge rendering her desperate.

Her body ached. Her mouth full of cotton. All sense of time disappeared. She floated somewhere in the silence of it. Scared he forgot about her, that he wouldn't teach her, that it was all for nothing. Something filled that cracked and broken place and she cried through clenched teeth. Finally, it seemed, the days were catching up with her. Nowhere to run. No work to drown in. No books to ease the ache of it. She was alone. Alone in this god forsaken loft, with nobody waiting for her at home. She had done it to herself, and she regretted it. If only for how much it actually hurt now that she sat with it. It struck her like a ton of bricks, and she cried against the weight of it. Her body shaking from the effort to do what was asked of her. She couldn't have answered why doing what he had asked was so important, even now.

She had to know. She had to find out where it went.

That wood-smoke and honey voice came at her and she flinched in surprise. "Well done, . I didn't actually think you capable…" His voice trailed off, and her sobs finally broke through. He spun the chair she sat in around and lifted her face with his hands. Through the pain, she registered the callous pads of his fingers and the smell of sage that clung to his skin.

If she could have seen his face though the tears, she would have seen something she had always dreamed of: Pride.


	3. Care and Control

_**A/N:** Unfortunately, my beta has been incredibly busy the last few weeks. I did my best with this one, but as always, I apologize for any glaring mistakes I might have missed. Feel free to hit me with a proverbial newspaper, and I will gladly fix it._

 _As always, thank you for every comment and critique. I only hope to get better, and hope you guys enjoy this story as much as I enjoy working on it. It's proving to be more challenging than expected._

* * *

The words were lost to her from some time, as she stretched out on a squashy futon he had transfigured from somewhere. Her face buried in the fabric. She distantly registered the sounds of his movement. The light tinkle of ceramic. The high pitched whistle of a kettle. She picked her head up to say something, and promptly put it down again. Unruly hair fanned out around her like some wild cloak. The strange, floaty feeling lingering for a moment longer.

Hermione sat up when she heard him approach. He sat cross-legged across from her, far enough to be comfortable, but close enough that she registered the smell of woodsmoke. He nudged the tea cup towards her, and she picked it up, thankful for something that forced her to move. The warm honeyed liquid went down like liquid gold, and she sighed with the relief of it. Finally, she found the words. "How long was I there?"

"Nearly 6 hours. I'm impressed." His voice was soft. Feather light and alien in her ears. Apparently, it was possible for that voice to surprise her still.

"What time is it?"

"One in the morning."

"Why?"

The corners of those thin lips twitched. "Because I needed to be sure you could follow orders implicitly, without a barrage of questions."

She nodded. Somehow, this made sense as she came back into her own skin. "Now what?"

He paused for a moment, considering. "We have negotiations to consider, but that is for another day. Tonight, you go back home. Sleep. Go to work and consider, very carefully, what this will mean. The orders I will give you will necessitate complete cooperation. Both for your safety and my own..." He regarded her for a moment, a look of resigned humor playing at the corners of his eyes. "It seems I will be staying longer than anticipated."

Negotiations. _Safety?_ She nodded, too tired to fully comprehend the implications.

* * *

When she woke up the next day, it was a slow, strange thing.

The smell of Ron's hair still clung to the bedding, but it hurt slightly less. She looked at the bedside table and noticed a small corked vial that she vaguely remembered Snape pressing into her hands before she disapparated. The slip of parchment in his distantly familiar handwriting. Drought of Peace. It was surprisingly thoughtful, though she resolved not to take it unless she needed it.

"Hey, Granger, you with us today?"

She blinked, caught unawares at her desk. The quill in her hand poised unmoving above the parchment in front of her. Two splotches of ink the evidence of her wool-gathering.

A short, baby-faced wizard stood in front of her desk, his arms piled high with ministry issued folders. His fair hair and eyes earnest and playful. He hefted the pile in his arms as he smiled. "You look a little lost, Granger."

She shook her head. "Sorry, I...my mind seems to be elsewhere today."

He tilted his head as he regarded her. "Are you ok?"

She paused and shook her head. She was going to have to start telling people eventually. "Ronald and I split up. I guess I'm still trying to process it all."

The man's face fell. "Oh...oh hey Granger, I'm so sorry. Look, you're-"

She raised a hand to stop him. "It'll be fine, Abberley. I guess I'll just be working a bit slower than normal for a bit."

"So you mean like the rest of us?"

A sad smile crossed his face, and she suddenly wanted to slap it away. The pity of it making her ill. Doing her best to play along, she returned it in kind. "How the mighty fall."

* * *

Snape had apparently been busy in the last few days. Four smaller cauldrons were in various stages of stasis when she stepped off the elevator to the loft. A large one, that required him to perch on a small step ladder as he worked, sat bubbling softly near the back. Her workspace, she noticed, remained untouched.

"Sir?"

"Occamy eggshells, Ms. Granger."

She froze for a moment, before looking at the work bench next to the large cauldron to grab them. She offered them up to his outstretched hand.

"Felix Felicis?" she asked, noting the Common Rue and smeared remains of Murlap.

"A client back in Hong Kong apparently is willing to spend an obscene amount of money for it. Who am I to tell him no?" The note of humor in his voice was a good sign.

She smiled, taking it upon herself to clean up the rest of his work bench as he finished brewing. The flick of his wrists at the last incantation stirred some deep curiosity. "Back in Hong Kong?" she asked lightly.

"As I said, I have carved out a comfortable existence elsewhere. You were not wrong in assuming wizarding China. Wizards here tend to believe they are the end-all-be-all of the world. They are not."

Her brain conjured some mental image of him working in some back alley apothecary, all long limbs in a short space. Those fluid movements contained unfairly in a tiny room. Some exotic flower in a pot too small. She quickly dismissed the thought. He'd never be caught dead without extension charms. "I didn't know you knew Cantonese."

"I didn't, until a few years ago," he said, climbing down from the stool. A flick of his wrist set a stasis charm over the cauldron.

"I've been thinking, sir…" she trailed off.

"Imagine my surprise."

She bit her bottom lip. Breathe. "I need to know where this-" she gestured between them. "-goes. I need to know what that was."

He sighed. Suddenly, he seemed very unsure of himself. He continued to clean up after the day's brewing work, avoiding her eyes for the moment. "That, Ms. Granger, was a very tame version of how I learned to think differently. To let go, and surrender to the problem. The way I was taught was unorthodox. The methods are highly charged, weighted and require absolute honesty. There is no room in Dominance and Submission for holding back."

"You don't mean-" Abruptly she was adrift on an unfamiliar ocean. For once, she knew absolutely nothing about something. All it did was serve to initiate the sequence to quest mode. The desperation to understand welling in her chest. "But-"

"Yes," he said simply, cutting her off. "That is exactly what I mean. Before you continue, you need to fully understand what it is you are asking to do." He waved his wand, and a non-verbal Accio sent several books sailing from somewhere Hermione couldn't see. "I don't expect you would have come across any of these in your studies, and if you did, I may have to return just to petition for a review of the Hogwarts Library."

She plucked the books from the air and looked at a few of the covers. The titles seeming innocent enough. _Service in Command, Learning the Ropes, The Ethics of Force,_ Care _and Control_. She held the books tightly to her chest, afraid they would jump back out of her hands at any moment, leaving her with more questions than answers.

Snape shook his head. "How is it that you were supposed to solve my problems, and yet you are here creating more?" The words rueful.

They made her smile. "As soon as I understand, I promise I will solve it. In the meantime, I will help here."

Long fingers pinching the bridge of his nose "No. Absolutely not."

"Nonsense, sir." She was back on solid ground. "You won't even know I'm here."

"Somehow, I doubt that very much." That strange fire was back in his eyes. She didn't know what to make of it. This wild predatory thing that seemed barely contained under the surface of him. Perhaps having died had allowed him some transparency. Or perhaps he was trying to warn her just what she was getting herself into.

* * *

The takeaway boxes were the first to go.

The flat had somehow become a tomb in the last few days. A museum of a time before; cursed with the spirits of long term commitment. Relics of her heartache strewn in strange places. A book half-heartedly tossed across the back of the settee. The duvet cover still there too, unmoved from where she had shed it days before. A can of Irn Bru balanced precariously on the edge of the coffee table. A spoon, the only evidence of the long gone pint of Gelato. It all waited for some unsuspecting explorer to wander by; to curse them with the knowledge of heartache.

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. How had she let herself get so bad? The cracked and broken space in her chest thrummed again, sending a fresh dull ache through her body. The symptoms of withdrawal clear to her now. She knew her serotonin levels were crashing drastically. The pain center of her brain overloaded with grief. Her eyes still watering at odd times when she was alone. The pain would pass, she kept telling herself. Chanting it like a mantra. It will pass. It will pass. It will pass.

There was something else to focus on, too. The books from her old professor sitting in the squashy armchair near the mantle. She didn't want to sully them with the horrible ghosts that resided elsewhere in the flat. Not until she restored it to something livable. Something that didn't hurt to stand in.

Blessedly, all of his things were gone. The last of it having been summoned at some point while she was away at work, or at the loft. Hermione threw open the windows and summoned a light breeze to air the place out. She would fumigate it if she had to. Anything to rid the place of him. Their bedroom reeked of it, and she hesitated at the threshold. That heady, boyish smell that was distinctly Ron. She remembered smelling it all those years ago in Slughorn's class. She didn't want to admit it then, and it hurt to admit it now, but she loved that smell. Her eyes welled up, and she cursed. Her wand waved again as she did her best to clear it from the room. For not the first time that day, she cursed herself for not taking the time to learn more domestic charms from Mrs. Weasley.

The bed was transfigured. That horrid engraved two post headboard replaced with something far more clean and classic. The pillows replaced without hesitation. She filled the room with music from her cheap Muggle digital music player, connected to a speaker she found at the Muggle charity shop. She smiled to herself. Mr. Weasley would love that shop. Someday, she hoped, she could see them again.

Finally, several hours later, the place seemed better. It felt better, in any case. It might still not be hers entirely, but it felt more like her. Clean and minimal, with enough space to finally keep her books on display, and not hidden away in the charmed trunk at the foot of their-her bed. She looked out at her new kingdom. Clean after the war in her own heart. It was a start, at the very least.

"Hermione?" A voice called from the floo in the living room. Ginny. She paused, afraid to go face it. "Hermione, are you home?"

Gryffindor courage and all that. She swallowed down the panic and padded to the fire. "Hey, Ginny."

"Oh thank goodness, you're ok." Concerned laced through the words.

"Of course, why wouldn't I be? I was just cleaning," she asked, surprised.

"Oh...oh dear you haven't seen The Prophet yet have you?"

Oh no. No, no, no not yet. Not yet. "No, no I haven't. Is...is it out, yet?"

"Hermione, look, I'm really sorry. I'm not sure how it got out, but I'm so sorry. You may want to set up those charms again."

A tap on the window let her know the weekend edition of The Daily Prophet was waiting for her. She paid the post owl and sent him on his way. There it was, on the front page. An old moving photo of her and Ron, in public and just after some unfortunate argument or another. Photo Hermione turned her back to Photo Ron, followed by him reciprocating in kind. 'Dreams Deferred: The End of an Era' Well, whoever was writing the headlines now wasn't as bad as the last guy.

"Don't read it. It's rubbish."

She went back to the fire, paper in hand. "I have to, Ginny."

"...please don't hate him too badly when you do." Ginny pleaded weakly. "He's just hurt, and you know how he can be when he's hurt."

 _Like a pissed off Hippogriff._ "What did he do, Ginny?"

The fire groaned in frustration. "What he always does. He got drunk and complained to anyone who would listen."

Hermione closed her eyes. This was going to be very bad.

* * *

 _Dreams Deferred: The End of an Era._

 _It is with a heavy heart that we report that after nearly nine years, our second favorite couple, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger have split. The Hogwarts sweethearts and heroes of the Second Wizarding War are officially done, according to our sources._

 _This comes as quite a shock, as the two had been deep in planning their dream wedding only a few days before. Though always chilly in public, the two didn't seem to be having any problems…_

She tossed the paper into the fire. That ugly parasite back, seething with need. A need to ruin him. To hurt him for doing the one thing he knew she hated, exposing them to the public. As if she didn't have enough time in The Prophet over the years. She tried to ignore it, pacing around the room, tugging her hair at the roots. The owls had started before she could set up the charms to keep them away. A small number of furious howlers came through, calling her all manner of things for breaking his poor heart.

 _And my heart?_ A few seemed to care, but worthless platitudes only served to make the ache worse.

The shrill ring of the telephone scared her. She hadn't even had the chance to tell her mother yet. She picked up the phone with shaky hands "Mum, hi I…"

That voice cut her off. "The last time someone called me 'Mum' they were incredibly drunk on cheap Firewhiskey."

She nearly dropped the receiver. "Snape?" The name left her name in a rush. She silently cursed her carelessness.

"I assume you're not drunk on cheap Firewhiskey?" he asked, his voice grave. If he cared of the causal address, he didn't seem to show it.

She nearly laughed. "No, sir. I am just surprised...how did you get my number?"

"The number I gave you is a burner. A cellular. Caller ID is an astounding thing."

"Ah." Her lip once again became the victim to her nerves.

"The paper this morning was rather enlightening." His voice was light, but there was something hiding just under the surface. She hated it. She kind of enjoyed it.

"Apparently."

"There are seemingly a number of contracts on my desk that have gotten out of hand. They will quite possibly take the weekend to finish."

She smiled. He was giving her a way out. "I'll be there shortly, sir."

The line went dead. She sighed, and dialed her mother. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

They ordered Chinese, of all things.

Hermione sat on the futon, which had now become a fixture of the loft, and he stood at the counter in the open kitchen. Her legs tucked up under her, a takeaway box filled with what was far from authentic Szechuan sesame noodles on her lap. One of the books he had given her laid open on the cushion next to her. She gave up on the chopsticks, opting instead for a fork roughly a quarter of the way through. She glanced up and watched him wield them competently against a container of white rice.

How surreal her life had become. Her mother had breathed a sigh of relief when she had called and apologized. Every mother loves her child, but Mrs. Granger knew she hadn't prepared her daughter for anything like this. In her defense, she didn't prepare Hermione for a life as a witch either. Some things you just don't expect your child to live through.

She looked at the open chapter of the book in front of her. For every answer the book gave her, four more questions sprouted. Questions of consent, desire, and 'why on earth would anyone WANT to be tied up?' Thank goodness there were no illustrations in this one, otherwise, she might have had to flee.

It was too late, really. The door had been opened, and she was now hungry to understand. What was so good about giving up control?

"I can smell the brain cells burning, Granger."

She smirked. She supposed sharing takeaway in amicable silence as she hid away from angry letters entitled him to a more casual form of address. "I thought you didn't want my incessant questions while I was reading."

"I don't. There is a problem, however, when you are vibrating so hard that I can hear the atoms crackle as you attempt to sublimate." He picked up a piece of chicken from another container, examining it critically as cheap disposable chopsticks held it captive. "I forgot how horrid the food was here. You are not allowed to choose the restaurant anymore."

"Oh, it's fine. Didn't you ever develop a taste for trashy Muggle takeaway?" she asked, placing another slip of parchment in between the pages of the book to hold another place. Dog-earing was for savages.

He gave her a flat look from across the room. Apparently, he never developed a taste for trashy Muggle takeaway.

Some of her fondest memories of her summers home from Hogwarts were catered by trashy Muggle takeaway. Friday Family Movie Nights in the Granger household always consisted of her parents and herself, crowded onto the sofa. The clan huddled under a throw blanket as they argued over which movie to watch. Popcorn occasionally made an appearance, but more often than not, it was some manner of food that was probably horrible for them. They ate it anyway. "Well, we can't all get actual Chinese food from China can we?"

A shoulder lifted in a shrug. "You could."

She made a noncommittal noise of dismissal.

"Out with it, already. The suspense is killing me." The sarcasm thick enough to choke on. She wanted to roll in it forever. This acerbic nonchalance the ointment for her wounds.

"There's a lot here." She flipped through the book again, finding one of her parchment markers. "There is so much I don't understand. Where is the joy in pain? Why would anyone want to give up control? Especially in regards to..." she trailed off, gesturing with her hands in hopes to express the things she didn't quite have the brass to say.

He smiled at that. "Spoken like someone who has never given up control."

A cloud of passed over her face. Something dark and distant. "The times control has been taken from me, and pain inflicted upon me, it hasn't exactly been pleasant." Her hand went to her forearm, rubbing the spot where the faded white word still stood etched into her skin.

He looked away from her then, not quite able to face the darkness he recognized in someone else. "The difference, Granger, is consent. Nothing in those books is to be done without the consent of both parties involved. One to agree for it to be done to them, and the other to agree to do it. If this stands on nothing else, it must stand on consent."

"And if consent is revoked?" she asked, nearly choking on the fear of it.

"Then it stops immediately. Without questions. That is what the safeword is for."

"How do you know when to use it, then?"

"That is up to the individual. If a submissive is unable to speak, there are other ways to indicate they wish to stop. In the event that they do not know their own limits, it is a Dominant's job to stop when they see the signs."

She considered this for a moment. There were precious few things in life Hermione loved more than a good, solid escape plan. She nodded, returning back to her reading.

It took everything in Hermione not to fidget at her desk.

They had decided where to start. The when she had left up to him. It could come at any time when she was in the loft. He would give her the phrase and that was her cue to let go. To surrender all control to him until he gave her permission to do otherwise.

But first, there were departmental protocols to go through. Press to dodge. Well meaning apologies to accept with some level of grace. Offers of tea to decline. Lunches to not quite eat. Proposals to work on. Walls to stare at. Bathrooms to cry in.

By the time she made it back to the loft that evening, she was drained. An empty husk of a woman going on about the motions. The smell of wood smoke and potions soothing her just enough to get through organizing the surprising amount of potions ingredients that he had managed to keep there. Distantly, she knew he was watching her. She hoped she didn't look as worn out as she felt.

"Granger." It didn't come like a command or a request. It came like a suggestion. "Sit."

Her eyes went wide, and she looked at the jar of nettles in her hands. This was it. This was what she was waiting for. She gently put the jar back on the workbench and folded her hands in front of her. She reminded herself not to say anything, and to just wait.

Thankfully, he didn't make her wait very long. "Go sit on your futon. Your book should still be where you left it. Read."

 _Read?_ She didn't need to be told to read. But she kept her mouth shut, as was the rule now, and went to go sit and read. Though when she found herself watching him brew instead of reading, she realized her attention was shot. Her mind raced with a myriad of things she ought to be doing, helping, or fixing, instead of just doing what he asked. She bit her lip, beginning to panic. She had been given the world's easiest task, and she just couldn't do it. Her lips parted to speak, but she remembered the first rule: no talking unless given permission. So she did the only thing she knew would get his attention.

She raised her hand.

When he caught her bouncing on the futon, hand in the air, something broke across his face. He doubled over with the effort to try and stop it, but he couldn't. That rolled tobacco and honey laugh erupted from his mouth and the sheer luxury of it made her freeze. It was a wonderful sound. Something so deep and smoky she thought she could taste it in the air. She smiled, unable to keep it from entering her cells. It filled that cracked and broken thing in her chest. Something in her thrummed with joy at being able to draw such a wonderful thing from him. The desire to bottle it overwhelming.

"Yes, Granger?" he asked through the laugh.

She looked from the book to him, a deep pleading thing in her eyes. A shake of her head sent wild hair bounding over her shoulders.

"You can't concentrate, can you?" The laughter finally dying slowly. The last of it leaking away, leaving her sad of its departure.

She shook her head.

A gentle smile played across his face and she wondered what it was about making her shut up that made him seem so comfortable.

"What's wrong?" he asked as he sat next to her on the futon.

What wasn't wrong. She screwed her mouth up in a discontented frown. He knew damn well she couldn't tell him like this. An exasperated sigh was her answer.

"You'll have to explain it without words, Granger."

She sat back on her knees for a moment, feet tucked under her. Some wild meerkat perched on the savanna. Without words. She looked down at her hands, the problem tricky. She looked into his face for some sort of clue, any kind of tell, and the answering look she found there was so unlike the man she knew it nearly toppled her off the sofa. He looked so calm and patient. Severus Snape was never a man to trifle with patience. An idea struck her then, and she pointed to her head. Shaping her hands to look like they were holding a jar, she shook them. Her mind was a jumble and she didn't know how to stop it.

He nodded, somehow understanding. "The trouble is, I need you to stop thinking."

Her answering look nearly sent him laughing all over again.

"No, Granger, I am not daft. You need to let it go."

She shook her head. That was not possible.

"That was not a request. Remember what we agreed to."

She froze. She was expected to follow all orders given to her, without hesitation. But how was she expected to follow something like this? She shrugged and held up her hands. She didn't know how to stop.

"Do you want me to help you stop thinking?" The undertow of something dark and warm in his voice made her stomach clench. He knew what the limits were, but that warm and wild thing promised her far, far more. Something past the things she read about. There was no way she was ready for any of it yet, but damn if she didn't want to know what it was.

Her face grew hot with the thought. Slowly, she felt herself nod.

He pointed to the floor in front of him. "Floor. Now." With the command she found herself sliding off the futon with a soft thump. Such a silly thing, listening to him tell her to sit on the floor. The ridiculousness of it sending her head to shaking. A twirl of his finger sent her facing away from him. "I'm going to touch you."

Fear jumped in her throat in anticipation. No, no he couldn't possibly. The idea of those hands reaching past that thick layer of propriety was both terrifying and exhilarating. She spent years watching those hands and even wondered once what they must feel like. The thought had quickly been put out of her mind when she realized just where she had wandered. Professor Snape touching any human being was a terrifying, almost repulsive thing.

But this wasn't quite the same man. Death and freedom had changed him. He was brilliant and acerbic and full of things she wanted to understand. He was striking when he took the time to care for himself. Even Hermione couldn't quite call him handsome. There was something in that darkness that she found becoming. Not for the first time since he found her in that Muggle bar, she wondered just how strange her life had become.

When his fingers slid their way into her hair, all thoughts ceased. Her spine went rigid in shock. Those damn fingers worked against her scalp, and a tension she didn't even realize was there slipped away under their ministrations. If she could have purred, she would have. Honey eyes fluttered closed and she drifted into the strange bliss of it. Those short nails scratched lightly at her scalp, and a sigh left her unbidden. Distantly, she realized no one had ever played in her hair before. Viktor tried once, but his hand got caught and he pulled it so hard she yelped in pain. Ron was always afraid of her hair. Treating it like some wild animal that might bite. Those damn fingers seemed to know their way around the jungle, and she melted into it.

That ridiculous nose nudged her head and those thin lips brushed against her ear. "Good girl," he whispered.

With those two little words, her world skidded to a halt.

There are very few times in a person's life when they can feel the earth stop spinning. She felt it, then. Something rearranged inside her and she felt the pieces fall into place, finally filling all those spaces that were empty. Her cells lit up with it and something swelled inside that cracked and broken thing. Those words took the pieces and rearranged it, changed it. It was still cracked and broken, but she recognized it again as her heart. She felt the tilt of her world shift before it sputtered to spinning again.

She shifted, twisting her body uncomfortably to look back at him. His fingers stilled in her hair, his face a blank mask. She nudged her head further into his hands. Don't stop. _Say them again. Please._ He cocked his head in a question, and she nodded. _Yes, more, please._

He obliged.


	4. Deep Dive

**A/N** : _This chapter contains explicit content. BDSM warnings and all that. I'll try to contain a lot of the scenes to their own chapters so people can skip if they need/want to. Today we_ explore: _Spanking! This is actually the first BDSM scene I've ever written. I hope you guys enjoy it. These two will be playing a lot more in the future, but everyone needs to start somewhere._

* * *

Hermione wondered if the world had always been so fascinating. If the dust bunnies that mated with the soot in the ministry fireplaces were always so buoyant and fluffy. If music ever sounded this good before. If paperwork was ever this enjoyable. It wasn't, really, but the memory of his hands in her hair made everything around her seem less horrid. The sappy looks didn't matter, dodging the Prophet's photographers didn't matter. Neither did Manderly and his cocked up excuses for not pushing through the House Elf Bill of Rights.

She wasn't sure how many nights she found herself at the loft for one reason or another. The excuses varied; extra potions contracts, help with some horribly unstable concoction that required the continuous work of two people for a surprisingly short amount of time. Eventually, he stopped giving her excuses and she just kept showing up. It became a game, of sorts. The best way to bribe him was with scotch, or toffees, of all things. The work would be done, and she would wait with barely constrained excitement for the command to 'sit.' He eventually lifted the gag order, and they would sit, her on the floor, his fingers in her hair. He told her of Hong Kong. She asked incessant questions of literally anything she could get away with, and a few things she couldn't.

She wasn't quite sure when the second shift came. This strange need to go further. To see how deep the strange floaty feeling went. It came when the words were lost and her chest hurt more than normal. She needed something but lacked the words to ask.

"Snape-" Her fingers drummed a nervous beat against her thigh, her lip caught between her teeth.

"Yes, Granger?" The informal address was an easy thing now. Something comforting. He wielded it with little regret.

"I think-I think I'm ready."

He cocked an eyebrow in surprise, brushing his hair away from his face. "Are you sure? It's not going to be as simple once we go forward."

She nodded. "There is more there. I've read all the books a thousand times by now, and I need to find it. I need to find what it is." The words left her in a rush. Afraid if they didn't all come out now, they never would. They all needed to be out before she could go forward into this dark abyss.

He regarded her for a moment. Those obsidian chips he called eyes studying her. "Sit." The command stern. Absolute in its simplicity.

She took her usual place on the floor, legs tucked up under her. That dark and wild look was back on his face, and it terrified her.

"You have full permission to speak for this. You remember your word?" His voice all dark chocolate and chili peppers.

She nodded. "Apparatus."

He shook his head. "When you are here, 'sir' is no longer an option. Understand?"

The formality of it stirred something in her chest. "Yes, Sir."

His eyes softened, and he rewarded her by digging his hands into her hair. "Good girl."

She scarcely had time to enjoy it before his hand wrapped itself around those wild tresses, and pulled. Just enough to drag her to her feet. Her eyes went wide with it. He tilted her head back, his nose nuzzling the soft skin of her neck. All sage and wood smoke and something else she couldn't recognize. Breath caught in her lungs and her heart was a war drum, beating a steady march. Her knees went weak against the contrast of his face and his hands.

Teeth sank into her shoulder and a hiss of surprise escaped through clenched teeth. Her mind wiped clean of all thought outside the delicious ache in her shoulder. A siren song called to her, somewhere under it all. The lyrics of it distant, barely understandable. Let go, it sang. Elegant fingers trailed up her throat, thin lips feather light against her ear. She lost herself in the cadence of his breathing.

Hands guided her to her knees, gently correcting her posture. A finger lifted her chin to look at him. It was somehow very hard to meet his eyes. That wild thing too intense to look at. His thumb ran across her lip, and distantly she wondered where the urge to nip at the pad of his finger had come from. Her lips parted slightly, her own self-control falling somewhere behind with the rest of coherent thought. This was what she wanted. This floating feeling she had caught glimpses of, but never could quite reach. She was free diving in this deep dark ocean, and it surprised her how much she enjoyed it. This dark and wild place where the salt of his skin seemed like the most delicious thing she could ever hope to taste. She nudged his thumb with her nose and nipped the flesh of his palm.

That glorious chuckle rumbled through him. "Easy, pet."

A small, strangled gasp escaped her lips as the shock of that strange name played in her eyes. Well and truly under the strange waters of this ocean. She looked to him then, the question plain in her eyes. _Is that for me?_

A smirk played at the corner of his mouth. "Really? Is that all it takes?"

Apparently, it was.

Long legs stalked around her in a neat circle. Had he always been so tall? Her eyes drank in the heels of his shoes, the hem of his slacks as he walked in front of her. She dared not move a muscle. Her body a tightly strung bow. A hand stroked the length of her back, setting every nerve ending in her body on fire. That hand stopped just at the small of her back. Her breath stopped with it, the blood pulsing in her face.

"Breathe, pet."

She tried with everything she had; but her breath came in a strange, ragged rhythm. Breathe, he said. Like such a thing was so easy when faced with that dark and wild thing. Breathe, he said. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. Her muscles relaxed into the beat of it. Centered in that floating feeling, her skin on fire under the warmth of his hand through her blouse. A small, mewling sound escaped her throat, and she realized just how touch starved she had been. It wasn't just his hands in her hair she had been craving. It was the 330 BTUs of body heat another human gave off that she needed. She arched into that touch, needing more of it. Hands gripped her firmly by the hip and the tension rang across her clear as a bell. She needed all of it.

"How long has it been since someone handled you properly, pet?"

"Almost 2 years, sir."

A hum of disapproval rang in her ears and suddenly she felt very small. Discontentment rang across the floating space as she realized the answer was not one he was pleased with. The need to please him in every way was overwhelming. Something she would think about much later.

"Then I will have to be gentle with you, won't I?"

 _No._

She shook her head frantically. She was tired of gentle. Tired of being treated like some fragile statuette sitting on the edge of a shelf. Like some wounded wild rabid animal. Tired of the bubble wrap and gloved treatment of her feelings. She remembered the fear in their eyes as her cheeks flushed pink with fury. As her curls seemed to rise with anger and hurt.

"Please, sir, no."

He paused, before taking his hands from her hips and standing in front of her. "Look at me."

She lifted her head, craning to look up at him from her place on her knees. He bent down, sitting perched on the balls of his feet back on his heels to meet her. "No?"

"Please, sir-" the words caught in her throat. You know the rules. If you want it, you have to say it. "-Please don't be gentle with me."

The look that crossed his face was so foreign to her she almost didn't know how to process it painted across those harsh unforgiving features. The tone of his voice made it even more strange.

"Very good, pet. You remembered."

It was pride. Thin lips curved in a closed mouth smile. Eyes softened around the corners, that dark and wild thing positively purred through his words. Her heart leaped with it, a pleased flush bloomed in her cheeks.

"Now, do you remember how to respond?"

She looked away for a moment, struggling to find the protocol through the haze of joy and whatever else fogged her brain. "-Thank you, sir?" Her eyebrow quirked as the question left her lips.

He chuckled, a hand working its way through her curls to scratch her head again. "Well done, pet. Those things will become easier for you in time, I promise."

She arched into his touch, pleased with herself.

"Very well. I won't be gentle."

She scarcely had time to process what exactly had transpired before he was suddenly to his full height again and beckoned her to follow him. She shifted, making to stand when the tisk-tisking of his voice made her stop.

"I didn't say you could stand. On your knees. Come."

Her stomach clenched as she crawled across the floor. He sat on the futon, and he patted his lap. She stopped in front of him, her head tilted in a question.

"Across my lap."

He chuckled at the look of shock that crossed her face. She hesitated only for a moment, before scrambling up onto his lap. Her breasts pressed against his thigh and she wondered if a man who seemed so cold and cut from glass could actually be this warm and soft. The feel of his hands stroking across her back drove away any residual hesitancy of being draped across her professor's lap. It was rather nice, she mused, feeling like a cherished lap cat.

"You're going to count them, understand?" The rumble of his voice made her tense. She knew exactly what this would be. They had discussed it briefly when they went over limits. This, she knew, was the first. Anticipation painted in twin stripes of fear and desire laced its way across her chest, and she nodded, chin bouncing against his thigh. "Yes, sir."

If she could have seen his face, she would have seen the curve of his mouth split into a predatory grin and the dark and wild thing behind his eyes set completely free.

The first strike across her bottom was sure but gentle. A playful, quick thing. She yelped and nearly giggled with it. "One."

The second was similar, slightly less gentle. It landed across the opposite cheek, sending her entire bottom tingling with it. It made her breath catch in her throat. "Two."

The third landed in the same place as the fist. Firmer and quick; stealing whatever shreds of coherent thought she had left. "Three."

The fourth landed where the second had. Her head swam with the growing stinging pain in her bottom and something else. Something darker that made her hips arch into the strike. The word settled into her head among the waves, something she wasn't quite sure she could remember ever feeling with this level of need. Lust. "Four."

He paused, taking a moment to savor the curve of her ass, the tension in her thighs, the little whimpering arch she made into the palm of his hand. The soothing caress was almost too much, and she whimpered. She wanted more pain. She wanted less. She wanted to live in this weird space between the two forever.

The fifth took her by surprise, and a manic giggle escaped her before she could stop it. "F-Five."

The sixth and seventh came in rapid succession, hard. The giggling ceased, and the pain, real pain, began. The balance was lost, and it hurt. "Six! Seven!"

The eight was nearly too much for her to bare. She stammered through the pain, tears welling at the corner of her eyes. "Eight!" she cried with it, the yelp of pain louder.

The ninth sent spots across her vision. She couldn't tell if she was sore, or if he was being less gentle. It didn't matter anymore. She flinched from the strike, and she could feel his displeasure in the pause of his palm on her. "N-N-nine."

She realized, almost too late, that she was crying. Her ass hurt, and something inside her snapped. The tension of weeks of cleaning out the flat and dodging howlers and that horrible ginger boy that promised her nothing but demanded everything broke; the tears finally came. She almost didn't feel the tenth strike through this new layer of pain. "Ten." The word was an anguished sob. A plea for mercy.

"Breathe, pet." He said, almost too gently to bear.

She couldn't. She didn't deserve to. Everything was broken and wrong. Her breath in ragged gulps. She didn't bother to hide the sobbing. He shifted under her, and she found herself gathered up in his arms, those long fingers sweeping a tear from her face.

"You did beautifully, pet."

She shook her head, frantically. She couldn't possibly have. She was crying and splotchy and everything hurt in ways she couldn't explain to him.

A huff of mind disapproval left him. "I'm the one that decides that, remember?" he asked, the chuckle trailing behind it softening the blow.

"Y-y-yes, sir."

"Good girl."

She wasn't sure how long she cried for, or when she had curled up into his lap. She wasn't sure when the beating of his heart against her ears had quieted the sobs, or when she finally began to come back into herself from that strange, floating place. The silence was almost magical, enveloping her completely. The only sound that mattered the gentle reliable thumping of his heart. She looked up at him, unsure of what she would find there in his face.

Severus' looked somewhere ahead of him, black sharp eyes a thousand miles away. Feeling her shift, he looked down at her, his face soft, but unreadable. "How do you feel, pet?"

She buried her face into his chest, suddenly deeply embarrassed. The intimacy of her nose buried in the soft fabric of his white shirt struck her as odd, but if he didn't seem to mind, neither did she. "Better, sir," she said after a moment as she tried to remember how words worked in her mouth.

"Better?" he asked, the amusement naked in his tone.

She nodded, her nose rubbing against his chest. "Words...hard. But...better, sir."

"I'm glad, then."

She wasn't prepared for the look of contentment on his own face when she looked up at him again. The words 'thank you' didn't seem to quite be enough. She didn't have the mental faculties restored enough to her to explain what it had meant, finally, to let it go. Instead, she stretched herself upwards and kissed those thin lips lightly. She found them soft, felt them twitch in a small smirk against her own.


	5. I come with knives

Hermione studied Severus' face for a moment. The heady waves of submission still washing through her head after the very thorough spanking. She straddled his lap, not quite sitting, her bottom still a touch too sore to put any pressure on it. Why she was surprised at the residual pain, she wasn't sure. Of course being hit several times by insanely strong hands that had been brewing (and who knows what else) for years would hurt. It was the way it hurt that fascinated her.

The books had gone on ad nauseam of 'good pain' and 'bad pain.' Bad pain was the only thing she knew. Bad pain was when you stubbed your toe against a large pile of leather bound books. When you jammed your finger in an automobile door. When you sliced your palm open on the point of a too-sharp quill. What they described as good pain, without context, had seemed much the same to her. Being spanked by your partner till your ass bruised. Having clamps with tiny weights attached to your nipples. The strike of suede straps across your back.

Now, it made sense. So many things made sense as she looked into his face, wondering if the lines etched into his skin by stress and anger and loss contained more answers. If perhaps behind his eyes lay all the secrets of the universe, trapped under that weird and wild thing that lived there. Some ancient dragon resting on a pile of hidden knowledge. She smiled at the whimsy of the thought.

He cocked his head in an unasked question. His hair sliding to one side, and she lifted a hand to it, continuing her silent study. No wonder it always looked so lank and greasy when she was young. It felt like cornsilk dipped in ink sliding between her fingers. He stiffened slightly at the intimacy of it. Her eyebrows pinched together, worry tracing its way across her face.

"What are you doing?" he asked, the mild humor barely contained.

"Studying," she said simply.

He shook his head. Protocol didn't seem to be her strong suit, but he found he didn't quite care enough to fight it too hard just yet.

"Studying?" The sing-song in his tone making her smile.

"sir," she added absently.

"Studying what, exactly?"

She nudged her nose against his; as if that answered everything.

Something in him shifted with that playful nudge. Some tension she could feel under the surface of his shoulders leaked away from him, and he sank back into the futon. A silent laugh rumbled in his chest, and he looked at her the way a wizard looks when he first discovers his own magic is a thing he can control.

Her lip jutted forward in a confused pout. Her arms crossed over her breasts and she leaned back to look at him more completely again.

He signed, resigned. "When we are here, absolute honesty is mandatory. You cannot keep things from me, and as such, I can't keep them from you either. I can't expect you to trust me otherwise."

Her head nodded slowly, her hair spilling over her shoulders. He picked up one of the unruly curls and ran it through his fingers. "I was afraid I would change something in you."

He nearly laughed again at the look that crossed her face. He couldn't remember ever seeing her so completely and nakedly confused. "You did, sir."

He blinked, the tension in his shoulders returning. She pushed him back into the futon and sighed. The words were returning to her slowly. "I'm sorry, sir. I-I will try to explain."

He nodded.

She inhaled, the cool intake of breath filling her lungs and cleared some more of the haze away. "Sir, Something-broke. But it was not a bad thing. It was-something that needed to break. Something that was holding me back. I don't know what it was, but it felt-I feel like me, again." A hand sat over her heart and she felt its own beating in her chest. It was still there. Whole and intact, achy as it was. "It felt good, to let it break. I want you to break it again, sir. Please...just...perhaps not tonight."

He sighed, unable to contain the laughter anymore. Feather light fingers touched his chest as it spilled from him. It really was a wonderful sound. Gratitude at being allowed to hear it made her toes curl.

"No, no more tonight, pet. Though I still owe you a reward for doing so well."

Her ears perked. The spanking wasn't a reward? The beat of the war drum in her chest returned. What more could he possibly give her? Could she even process anything more?

He didn't give her time to think. A pale hand reached behind her neck and pulled her to him, another cupping the side of her face. His lips pressed to hers, a sweet, chase thing. A question, asking permission for more.

Her mouth trembled under it, the strangeness of it disarming. Severus Snape, ex dead man, tormentor of her childhood years, kissing her in the most innocent of ways. After he had just laid hands, repeatedly, heavily, forcefully, on her bottom several times with her complete consent. Which, shep decided just as his lips touched hers, she would like to experience again.

She wasn't sure when her hands wound their way through his hair, or when she had risen above him to drink him in as much as she could. She breathed him in, drawing the air from his lungs. The CO2 made her head spin. She pulled back, the little breathless gasp he let escape his lips music to her ears. A chorus of angels couldn't have produced something so lyrical. It was humanity, from a man she never expected to be as such.

He barely had time to regain his breath before she was on him again. She tried to slow herself, to savor this thing he had given her. This intimacy. This new magic labeled as lust in her mental files. Somewhere under the scattered memories and through the distant ache of nostalgia, she knew that her previous knowledge on the subject was completely and utterly inaccurate. The quiet fumbling in her 4th year with Viktor Krum between the shelves of the library, with their chaste whispers and discreet giggles. Her own misguided attempts at seduction in her early twenties, feeling rather foolish in a honey gold satin robe she found at Primark in the clearance section. The silly feeling wiped from her as she watched the red inched up Ron's neck all the way to his hairline. That one time in the Three Broomsticks on their annual pilgrimage to Hogwarts for the remembrance ceremony, when Ron had actually taken his time with her. When he had finally treated her like something beautiful.

Distantly, she realized he had taken control again. He pulled her down, tasting the strange neutral sweetness of her tongue. Exploring the ridges of her mouth with a quiet restraint. She wondered if he was just as touch starved as she was. She asked the question silently, with her hands and her lips. iWhen was the last time someone handled you properly, Sir?/i

The answer, she deduced, had been quite some time.

* * *

Snape reminded her she was in charge of herself again with a simple 'you can get up now, Granger.' He walked her to the elevator and watched her go, even though she could have just disapparated on the spot. She watched as he disappeared behind the metal gate and the passing floors. He had let her go, back into the wilds that were her normal life.

Hermione looked at herself in the full-length mirror that was charmed to the back of the bathroom door in her flat. The bruise he left on her shoulder with his teeth beginning to bloom. A shiver ran down her spine as she plaited her hair. She could have charmed it. She could have healed it. She decided to carry it, along with the ache in her legs. It was a comforting pain. A reminder of a job well done.

She stepped into the shower (right foot first) and sighed. Something had changed. She had changed, though it wasn't quite apparent how. Still, it was welcome. Anything to help make the distance between the time before and now that much greater. By the time she crawled between the sheets that night, she found she was smiling.

* * *

"You look-good," Ginny said from the doorway. Harry stood behind her, the sheepish look on his face softening the fine lines that were beginning to etch themselves into his brow. Hermione couldn't remember when he had stopped looking like a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders to a man fighting with shadows behind those striking emerald eyes.

"We brought dinner," He said, holding up a bag packed with glass containers.

She smiled. Her lack of culinary skills was somewhat legendary among her friends. The Brightest Witch of Her Age couldn't fry a blasted egg. More often than not she defaulted to salads, not to be healthy, but because you couldn't really mess up chopped vegetables and some manner of protein. Ron wasn't much better, having been babied when it came to domestic duties his entire life. For not the first time, she wondered why it even happened.

Harry looked around the flat, that sad distant look on his face as he searched for signs of his other friend. Hermione's stomach dropped as he lifted the photo she had repaired on the mantel. She couldn't quite bring herself to look at boyish Ron every day again. The boy in that photo not the same as the man she separated from. It made the irrational desire to bring him home would well up and drown her. It made her angry.

They sat around and ate warm leftover lasagna. Hermione bursting with gratitude that her friends had not deserted her yet. Thankful Harry knew his way around a kitchen, and cared enough to share.

"You know, there's this old muggle saying about cooking with love. I used to think it was rubbish. I'm starting to believe in it," Hermione said as she shoved a forkful of noodles into her mouth.

Ginny looked at Harry, confused. "That's not just a muggle thing, you know."

"Really?" Harry asked, eyebrows raised in genuine surprise.

She laughed. "They are different, but we're all still humans aren't we? I think that kind of stuff is universal. I think that's why Mum always worked so hard to take care of you guys and our other friends. It was the one thing she could do for us, you know?"

Hermione considered this for a moment. "How is your mom?"

"Angry," Ginny said truthfully. "Heartbroken I think. Though really, I think she's just more upset at the chance at executing another wedding being snatched from her greedy little fingers. She gets off on hosting."

Harry sputtered, his glasses slipping from his nose. "GIN!"

The girls laughed. "Oh come on, Harry. You know she is happiest when the house is full of an improbable amount of bodies and she is pulling potatoes out of nowhere," Ginny said.

Hermione tucked her feet up under her, her hands warmed by the dinner plate. "Tell her, when you see her, I'm sorry again."

"She knows you're sorry. I think she understands, under all the fiery bluster. Don't worry, I think she'll come around sooner rather than later."

"I hope so," Hermione said. She pushed the food around her plate, distracted.

"How's work?" Harry asked, hearing the dejection creep into the edges of her voice.

She sighed. "I don't know why I am at all surprised that it would be this difficult to get them to even consider the House Elf Bill of Rights. Manderly is a giant walking sentient cock with his head so far up his own ass he has become the world's most perfect Ouroboros."

Ginny barked a surprised laugh. "Language, Hermione!"

Harry nodded sagely. "Between Manderly and Forrester in Magical Law Enforcement being lenient with the tracking of rogue Death Eaters they could start a Coalition of Sentient Body Parts. Forrester might just be the world's largest asshole."

Hermione growled. "Oh, Forrester. Don't remind me. Is he still trying to block the release of the Snape Reports?"

Harry sighed. "I'm going to have to give up that lost cause at some point."

Hermione put her plate down so fast she nearly spun it off the table. "No! You can't!"

Ginny blinked. "Wait, The Snape Reports? You guys are still working on that?"

Harry rubbed the back of his neck, the old tension of this particular fight knotting up again. "Not actively. It's more of a thing I drop around the office casually when I have time, and people just kind of pat me on the shoulder and go 'Someday, Potter.'"

Hermione's mental files rearranged themselves. Mentally running through the files, she scoured through them, remembering the vectors in her calculations. Her face split into a predatory smile. There was work to be done.

"Hermione...you have that scary 'I figured it out' face. What on earth are you thinking?" Ginny asked as she cleared the plates into the sink. She charmed them all to wash and put themselves away.

"I've taken on a freelance project. I suppose in part to distract myself from-" she gestured wordlessly around the flat. "Harry just reminded me of something that might help."

"The Reports? But why?"

She waved her hand, a dismissive gesture. "Complex Arithmancy nonsense. I wouldn't want to bore you."

Harry made a silent gesture of thanks while Ginny busied herself in the kitchen assembling desert.

* * *

"Snape! Snape! I have an idea!" She nearly sprinted into the loft from the elevator. Why she still insisted on the elevator she wasn't sure.

There was a non-distinct growl of pain from the kitchen.

"Snape?" She walked to the far side of the island in the kitchen, leaning over to see.

He crawled backward out from under the sink, rubbing his head and grumbling. "This better be bloody good. You woke up the damnable mandrakes with your harpy screeching."

She snagged her bottom lip between her teeth, desperately trying to stifle a laugh at the look of him. All sour faced and rumpled, his long hair mussed in its ponytail. "I'm sorry. You didn't warn me it was mandrake day."

"I shouldn't have to warn anyone that it's mandrake day. It should just BE mandrake day, where I harvest the blasted mandrakes without fear for my future self's cognitive abilities." He brushed the potting soil from his fingers down the front of the canvas work apron he wore over black denims. His shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

She caught herself searching his forearms for signs of the Dark Mark, in spite of herself. She knew from first-hand accounts that the mark faded into a scar, but had only ever seen the pale outlines of the skull and snake etched into one arm. Draco Malfoy had been, she hesitated to call it 'kindness', gracious enough maybe, to prove to the Wizengamot what exactly happened to the mark once Voldemort had fallen. She remembered it looking not too different from the scar that ran across her chest to the tip of her waist from the trio's great ride into the Department of Mysteries. Curse scars tended to look the same. Dark magic was the great equalizer after all.

She spotted it, pale and matte against his alabaster skin. The faint outline of the snake barely visible.

"You're almost charming when you're in a snit," she said.

He scoffed, yanking down his shirt sleeves again. "And you are far more becoming with your mouth shut. Now what on earth was this star shattering idea that required you to barge into my lab like some banshee off the moors?"

Honey colored eyes fluttered closed as she rolled them back into her head. "Whatever you smacked out of me seemed to work. I have an idea for the equation. I included it in the initial calculations, but I didn't account for their actual release OR who could release them."

He eyed her for a moment, lost somewhere just before incredulity. "What reports." It came almost as an accusation.

"The detailed account of your memories that were never released to the public," she said, suddenly feeling very small.

He stalked back and forth in front of the cabinet he had crawled out of, slamming the doors shut with his foot before jabbing his wand at it and casting a wordless silencing charm. Teeth clenched and bared in a near feral sneer. "Absolutely not."

There was something striking in his anger, and she tried not to smile. "I figured you wouldn't like it. Harry has-"

"DO NOT SPEAK OF POTTER IN THIS PLACE!" He roared. Fists slammed onto the counter, making several glasses shake in their wooden stand. "NOT HERE."

She blinked, taking a step back from the force of his outburst. She had miscalculated, terribly. She knew he might be angry, but was utterly unprepared for this level of rage levied at her. The weight of it a blow to the stomach. She held up her hands in defeat. "Ok-Ok I'm sorry. But I-"

"Get out." His voice went flat, ice crystalline around the edges.

"What?"

"You heard me. Get out."

She turned on the spot and disapparated without another word.

She wasn't sure what was worse, the cheap firewhisky or the toxic cocktail of anger and self-pity that churned in her head.

Hermione paced back and forth in the flat, hair a mass of nerves and fury and something else she couldn't quite name. How dare he. He drags her out of her own self-medicating in that blasted muggle bar, convinces her to let him have his devious way with her (though even she had to admit it had been fairly tame, considering) in order to help with his damned problems that he plopped on her doorstep in the middle of what might as well have been a divorce. How dare he. That unpleasant older man with his skinny legs and greasy hair and that bloody ridiculous nose; always stalking about like some ill-mannered cat with its tail caught in-

The shrill ring of the phone broke her silent ranting. She picked it up, screaming "WHAT?" without any preamble.

"I suppose I earned that." That blasted trying-too-hard to be deep and moderately attractive voice. He had the nerve to sound calm. She wanted to wring his scrawny neck.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hang up on you and let everyone know you're alive." She picked up her half finished tumbler of firewhisky and chugged the rest of it down. Her face flushed. Small tendrils of smoke leaked from her nose.

The line was silent for a moment. Two. Three. "Because we're not done yet." His voice was small. This was as close as she was going to get to an apology.

She drank it in. A strange chaser. "I suppose not. Nothing is ever easy with you is it." It wasn't a question. It was a fact. Water was wet. Fire was hot. Nothing with Severus Snape was easy.

"No. I come with knives."

She paused. He was a stiletto when he was kind, straight and to the point, no fuss and no curves. A serrated blade when he was angry, his words jagged and cruel, causing as much damage on the way in as they did on the way out. "I never knew you capable of poetry, Snape."

"You don't-"

"No. Stop right there. I know exactly what you are capable of, Severus Tobias Snape. You are vicious and acerbic and dangerous and all manner of loathsome."

The line was quiet for a moment. Two. "I suppose I earned that too."

"You did more than earn it. You basked in it." No longer referring to just the past afternoon. The alcohol made her brave. It made her stupid. It made her nostalgic and dangerous.

She couldn't tell if he was losing his footing, or desperately trying to remain careful. He sighed after another pause. "I'm not going to defend myself for what I've done."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm telling you I know what I've gotten myself into." Except she didn't. She didn't know anything and she damn well knew it. "I know who you are. I've seen them, you know. The memories. Even the ones you left in your office. I know about-" She stopped herself. If she summoned that sacred ghost now she would never be able to go back. "I know about a lot of things, Snape. Do not for a second think I don't. Who do you think wrote the damn report in the first pace?"

"...you wrote…"

"Yes, Snape. I did. I wrote the damn defense that cleared your stupid name, but they never let us release the reports for bullshit 'national security' reasons. That horrid book Skeeter wrote was the only thing that got out, and we all know how reputable Skeeter is."

She could hear his breathing through the receiver, steady and slow. "Come back tonight."

"I can't." Sheepishness crept into her voice, the anger she felt dissipating faster than she liked. "I drank a lot of cheap firewhisky."

She could hear the awful smirk in his voice. "Sober up, Granger."

She grumbled, and hung up on him.

It wasn't until the next day, when the hangover kicked in, that she realized he had asked for her to come back.


	6. Tactical Error - pt 1

Hermione showed up the next day after work, taking the elevator to give him ample time to either hide or arrange himself into a false nonchalance. He opted for a bit of both, ridiculous nose buried in a large tome in a corner of the workroom. Casually stirring a cauldron anti-clockwise without so much as a glance at it.

She wasn't sure where the words were. She stood and watched him, not even wasting the energy to find the right ones.

"You came back," Snape said simply.

She hummed an agreement. "You're surprised," she offered.

He shook his head, putting the book down. "No. By now, if not for my little-outburst, we'd be further along."

She nodded. She wasn't sure how far, or where they would be. Since that first night he put his hands in her hair, she had felt the quiet pull back to the loft. The times she wasn't there, she wanted to be there, doing literally anything so long as she was in his orbit. The desire to just stand near him had increased at an alarming rate. It was new, and a bit terrifying. She ran a few diagnostic charms on herself before she left the flat to make sure she hadn't picked up a stray enchantment anywhere.

'Clingy' was not a word most people used to describe her. Cold, distant, aloof maybe. Ron had called her all of them more than once over the years. She even started to believe some of it, when the first of the threads that bound them together started to fray. 'Frigid.' He spat the word at her when for the third time that week she sidestepped his advances. She shook her head, not wanting to relive the memory now. Those were the ones that hurt the worst. The ones that barged their way in when she wasn't quite paying attention. "Where do we go, then?" Her voice was small, unsure. Unsure where she wanted to go.

"You're not afraid, are you?" He asked, and she realized he wasn't just asking about moving on.

"Of course I am." She gestured between them. "Whatever this is, it's going to get volatile before either of us figures out exactly what we're doing here."

He nodded, finally putting down the stirring rod and casting a stasis charm over the cauldron.

"You think I don't know what I'm doing?" He asked finally, a look of mocking amusement plain on his face.

"No, I trust you to be good at your job. Whatever you've decided to teach me, I'm going to learn it whether I want to or not."

"You always have a choice." The mocking tone seemed more directed at himself than her.

"No, we both know that's a lie. This thing you've shown me? I can't just leave it here." She trailed off, unsure if she wanted to let him in on her filthy little secret. She needed to see it though out of a deep, primal desire to please. She wanted to see that look of pride painted across his face again looking only at her.

She looked at him; fear turned her stomach into knots as she realized how badly she wanted that. The urge to blurt it out knocking the breath out of her. She wanted him. She wanted to please him, to ease the edges of the constant tightness in his body. To catch him off guard and hear that strangled little gasp for air. To run her hands through his hair and taste the salt of his skin.

It must have shown somewhere behind her eyes. He considered her for a moment, the question tapping a rhythm with a stray finger on the work table. "I said that too, to the Master that trained me."

"Who trained you?" The question left her lips and the moment they did she regretted asking. She didn't want to know. Afraid to picture the person that managed to get Severus Snape over their knee and spank some good sense into him.

"Later," he said.

She nodded, thankful for the pass. "Snape?"

"Yes, Granger?"

"I don't want to think anymore." The words a plea. A prayer.

"Sit."

* * *

The owl dropped the dark green Ministry issued envelope on her desk. The logo for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures embossed across the front. She opened it, quickly scanning the memo inside. M _s. Granger, we regret to inform you the hearing for your proposal for the creation of the House Elf Bill of Rights has been delayed until November 31st. If you would like to schedule a specific time for the hearing, please inform Mr. Jacob Manderly at your earliest convenience._

"Manderly," she growled. Two more months added to what should have been the crowning glory of her 3rd year at the Ministry of Magic. Two more bloody months before she could even argue the case for the bill in front of the Wizengamot. Two more months of mountains of parchment and a sore wrist and gritting her teeth at lunch as she tried to dodge him for fear of ramming his stupid asshole face into the wall. Two more months.

It struck her then it had been nearly four months since she broke off the wedding. Four months of being a the loft. A month since their last scene. A month of going home most nights deeply unsatisfied and afraid she had done something horribly wrong. Of wondering if she was being punished for bringing up Harry.

"Granger, hey! Good, you're here. Look, I need help with the North-East Starchaser Clan Centaur reports." Abberley skidded to a halt in front of her desk, his arms stacked with several rolls of parchment. His soft blue eyes pleading above the cream-colored stack.

She sighed. It was hard when he looked so pathetic and soft. That gummy desire to please sticking her feet to the floor. "Sure. Just give me ten minutes and I'll be over to take a look."

"Thanks, Granger! I owe you a drink," he said with a wink before trotting off to wherever young men and their souls went to die under the weight of bureaucracy.

The wink was odd, she thought. Had anyone ever winked at her before? The mental files came back inconclusive.

* * *

She gave up control the second she walked into the loft. Gave no preamble, unwilling to play with the usual pretense. She knew what she wanted, and decided that now was the time to get it.

If Snape could smell it on her when she walked it, she didn't know. She could only read mild amusement as he watched her kick off her Oxfords and kneel in her place. "By the gods, I think she's finally learned protocol." Sugar coated acid. The dark and wild thing laughing in his eyes.

"Sir." She nodded.

"And so well behaved today. The little wretch must want something." He sat in a warm red leather chair, long legs crossed at the ankles. He looked like a contented cat, all long lines sprawled out with lazy control. The dark thing giving away a desire to pounce, though his body remained languid. What he wanted would come to him soon enough, and he knew it, the bastard.

"Just you, sir."

The words struck them both harder than they expected. She had promised him honesty, but she wasn't sure she had agreed to blurt out the dark needs of that cracked and broken heart still beating in her chest. She felt it stop for a moment, before frantically starting an arrhythmic beat. All the blood in her body pooled in her face. It made her dizzy, and she put her face in her hands in a vain attempt to hide her embarrassment.

"Look at me." His voice deep and earthy. Timbre warm and rumbling in a way that made every part of her shiver with wretched need.

It was the need that unhinged her. The need was new, intense and overwhelming. Of course in her youth she had felt the franticness of teenage lust. The rush of the newness of it, the hectic desire for things she didn't have the context for yet. But this need was tempered. Honed by years of benign neglect and that ringing hollowness that comes with a lifetime of incomplete satisfaction. She always wondered why it never quite felt complete. Why even when she was sated, it always felt three degrees off course. She always wondered if there was something she missed. Looking up at that dark man and his impossibly long legs in that blasted leather chair, she knew it was whatever this was. This game.

She looked up at him, and the look in his eyes put an end to her train of thought. Whatever he was thinking, he was far too amused for his own good. "Just me, pet?" Raven hair framed that alabaster face, those thin lips curved in their trademark predatory smirk. She had given him a weapon and he intended to use it to his full advantage.

She cursed herself. She had never been the tactician, everything about her too well displayed on her sleeve. "Yes, sir. Just you." Too late to go back now.

He leaned forward in the chair, elbows perched on his thighs. He regarded her over laced fingers. "And what would you do to have what you wanted?"

He laid the trap effortlessly. She bit back the 'anything' that tried to claw its way out from her chest and into her mouth. There was no right answer here. Anything she would have said would only result in her marked disadvantage. He was playing with her and she hated it. She loved it. "What would you have of me, sir?"

"A great deal."

The words pushed into her chest and stole her breath. If she had a doubt of what he wanted from her before, those words dispelled what was left. She wasn't sure if anyone had ever made their intentions so vividly clear with a handful of words and a smirk. "You didn't answer the question, sir." The words left her in a breathy hush.

"Not in the way you would have hoped, I'm sure. You want explicit directions. You want a textbook to follow. I hate to disappoint you, pet, but you won't be getting that here."

She frowned. The test was coming and he was going to make her ask for it. "And what will I be getting today, sir?"

He let out an amused huff. "Exactly what you ask for."

"I asked for-" the words caught in her stomach. This was the test. Or at least part of it. She still couldn't quite bring herself to say some of the things he seemed so readily available to give. Whether it was out of shyness, some residual prudishness that she hadn't grown out of, or some deeply rooted Anglican shame she hadn't quite worked out she wasn't sure. "-just you, sir."

He smiled then, some predatory thing. "And you will have it, if only you ask. Be precise. Be clear. You will only get what you ask for."

He might as well have asked her to cast a wandless patronus. The trouble was, she didn't quite know the words for what she wanted. Knowing him as she did, anything was not an appropriate answer. He would give her no more and no less than what she asked for, and she wasn't sure she was ready to admit all of it. The pages of the books he had given her now had soft spots from where she thumbed the pages over and over. Meditating on them, daydreaming about them. The ropes and toys and floggers and all manner of things that scared her silly but provoked feelings she had never felt with that intensity prior. The need to have it, to feel it, to be broken completely. She closed her eyes and signed. To his credit, he didn't prod her further. She didn't need help digging her own grave.

A beat. Two. Three. Finally, she opened her mouth, the words careful and small. "I want you to use me, sir."

A black eyebrow arched in an elegant arch on his face. "Well, now. That is a surprise. Use you for what, pet?"

The words were strangled, shaky and feather light. "For your pleasure, sir."

The look she found on his face was so naked and sincere it made her flinch. She couldn't recall a man ever looking at her with that kind of-she struggled to find the words for it. Need? Desire? He looked at her the way a starving man looks at his first real meal in weeks. The way children look at presents wrapped under Christmas trees. The way cats look at mice before they pounce. It sent a thrill through her. The shiver up her spine almost as good at the look itself.

"Are you sure? I will not be gentle with you." The words lost between a purr and a growl. An internal war of his own self-control laced through them.

She nodded, unable to look away. "Yes, sir."

He sat back in his chair, a bastard prince on his throne. His chin lifted, his eyes regarding her through heavy dark lashes. Hands bracing the arms of the chair, making the leather sigh under his hands. "Beg."

Hermione Granger had never begged for anything in her life. She would ask for something and either it was given or it wasn't. She didn't beg Viktor to write. She didn't beg McGonagall for the time turner. She didn't even beg for her own copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos when she was ten. Precocious as she was, she just waited until she could get to the local library and read it hidden between the shelves lined with advanced volumes of theoretical physics and Astronomy. She felt now much as she did then; small against the concept of a vast unknown.

"Please, sir?" She pleaded. How did one beg properly anyway? It felt shallow and flat to her own ears.

He made a tsking sound with his tongue. "You aren't going to get anywhere with mediocrity."

She looked at his shoes, studying the texture of the pointed toe made of stiff leather. She felt small and insignificant and lost.

"It's not as hard as you're making it out to be. Just let go, and ask for what you want."

She breathed. Closed her eyes and went inward. Into that dark ocean where the waves lulled her busy mind. Let go, he said. She let the waves lap at her, finding that light floating feeling. That place where nothing outside of his words mattered. She called back the feeling of his hands on her back, the way he pulled her hair, the shock of his teeth in her shoulder. She let it drag her under, and let herself float there. A small smile tugged at her lips. This was what she wanted.

She crawled across the floor, placing herself between his knees. She pulled out the elastic that bound her hair back, letting it spill over her shoulders in a cloud of honey. She reached out slowly, a hand snaking its way up from his ankle to his knee. She realized it was the first time she had willingly touched him first. She savored the feel of the fabric of his trousers under her hand. Soft and fitted to those impossibly long legs. She braced her hands on his knees and did the only thing that felt right.

Her nose grazed the inside of his thigh. Lips pressed to the midnight fabric. She opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the flesh as slowly and softly as she could manage. The resulting hiss in response made her smile, and she increased the pressure just enough to hear it again. She felt his hand sink into her curls and she let go. Her face nuzzled the place where she had marked him. Her hands felt his thighs tense as she gently nuzzled her way inward. The scent of musk, sandalwood, something distinctly male, and something akin to the way the air smelled after a lightning strike surprised her. She wasn't sure what she expected, but knowing he was as worked up as he was already was startling. Knowing that she was the one that caused it was thrilling. Lips trailed a slow path inward. Taking the time to study the way his body reacted to her. The way his muscles tensed. The way his hand gripped her hair as she got closer to what they both seemed to want. Her lips pressed against the apex of his thighs. The resulting growl and the twitch of flesh under her lips more satisfying than she expected. She did this. Even at his mercy, she still had this power.

He pulled her by the hair to arch her face up to look at him. She grinned, unabashedly proud of herself. The look of sheer mischievous glee that danced in her eyes made him laugh. "You never asked for what you wanted." The words breathy and husky.

"You never said I had to use my words, sir." Far too pleased with herself for her own good.

"Cheeky," he chided.

She shrugged, an amused hum rolling through her.

"Say it." The command warm under the growl as he pulled her hair harder. "Beg."

"Please, sir, will you use me? Will you take your pleasure from me? Will you mark me and claim me and use me till you are satisfied?" The words rang between them, clear as a bell. Dripping with things she never meant to share. Her own need plain in the near moan as he tugged her to her feet.

He pulled her down to him, eyes on fire before he claimed her mouth. She arched into it, opening herself to his whims. His mouth frantic, taking from her what she had taken from him the last time they played this game.

He murmured against her lips. "As you wish, pet."

* * *

 **A/N** : Whoops, sorry to leave a short chapter there, but I'm trying to make good on my promise to keep their scenes separate for those who may want to avoid the gratuitous nature of them. Because _howdy-dee_ are we gonna get _gratuitous_. These two just need to get it out of their respective systems I think.

As always, I'm sorry for any errors and thank you for sticking with me this far. I read every single comment and take them all to heart. It thrills me each and every time to know that people are enjoying this mess I'm making of the English language.


	7. Tactical Error - Pt 2

_A/N I am so terribly sorry this took so long to put out! Quite a bit of life happened in very rapid succession. Before I knew it, I lost the thread of the story and had no time to find it again. This is also the first time I've really tried to craft a sex scene that didn't end up feeling cliche or gross to me (you may disagree. That's fine.)_

 _But it's not dead! Where these two will go from here, I'm not so sure, but at the very least, I can let them have their fun for now._

 _As always, feedback, notes, corrections, all of it, are most welcome. Thanks for sticking with it!_

* * *

Hermione wasn't sure there were three more beautiful words in the English language. Individually, those words were harmless. In the mouth of anyone else, they were benign. Even strung together as they were, on anyone else's tongue they were mediocre. Pale and flat, meaningless things. As. You. Wish. The words slipped from him so casually that she almost didn't realize what he said.

"As you wish, pet." Delivered in that damn chocolate whiskey voice, with that wretched masculine rumble. Laced with promises and threats.

They sent the war drums beating in her chest as he stole her breath with his mouth. Snape made good on her request, taking from her whatever he could. Her hands snaked around his neck, nails digging into whatever flesh she could grab. Desperate to ground herself, to complete the circuit. She tried to catch her breath but found being away from his lips was a thing she wanted the least. Living off his carbon dioxide seemed a perfectly viable option for the rest of eternity.

Abruptly, he pulled away. Easing back into his leather throne. Lips swollen and full, a faint flush to his cheeks, but otherwise seemingly innocent. Like he hadn't just had the nerve to leave her head swimming and her body alight with this new magic.

She blinked, confused. The words to ask where his mouth went and why he stopped lost in her pale attempt to regain her breath. "Sir?" It came as a strangled plea.

"I knew you could learn how to beg." Those obsidian chips studied her. Face unabashedly smug.

Her body hummed with the need for those pale hands to be anywhere on her person. She whimpered with it. The sound of which seemed to shift something in him. She recognized the look that painted it's way slowly across his face. She had seen it often enough on the twins, when some new idea was born in that electric silence that only twins have. It was a look born of chaos, and the desire to harness it. She imagined it was the same look that crossed all those who longed to harness things larger than themselves.

He pushed himself up from his bastard throne, all liquid grace and full control. She stepped back from him, fear making her toes itch. The flinch was a mistake. Two quick strides and he was on her again. One hand snatching her arm and twisting her into a steel grip. The other wrapped around her throat, fingers feather light against her skin. She yelped, the sound triggering a low growl in her ear. Teeth grazed the flesh of her neck, and she was drowning. Her blood effervescent in this dark and wonderful ocean. Her skin danced with the power of it. She wasn't sure if the near-feral growl she heard rumble through his breath was him or in her imagination. It danced across her skin, some primal thing.

He marked her again, the opposite shoulder. She wondered distantly if he was on some slow mission to claim every piece of her. A deep wild thing of her own nearly rebelled at the idea of it. That part of her that, as cliché as it felt, was unequivocally Gryffindor. She found, however, that she didn't care. Let him set fire to the bits of her that still felt bound by satin and beads. What did she care, in this space called submission.

He kicked her legs apart, snatching her wrists in clever hands before lifting them above her head. "Stay." The command easy. All sweet promises.

She stayed. She rolled her head, feeling her body in the strange position. She felt the charm work a second before she heard the incantations. More pillowy than a full body bind, but no less unforgiving. Her limbs frozen to the spots he left them in. She felt her mouth, surprised she could move her lips. She tested the rest of her body. Her feet, and wrists, the only thing immobile.

He stalked around her in slow, easy strides. Eyes traveled over every inch of her body, lingering nowhere in particular. She felt like a stranger in her own skin. An explorer in a spacesuit. She could only recall a handful of times in her life when she felt like the dark passenger of the body called Hermione. The first time Viktor had kissed her. Seriously kissed her. Those large, heavy hands cupping the slight curve of the back of her thighs as he lifted her onto one of the small desks in the library. Objectively, she knew her slightly-shorter-than-average frame, that carried what she secretly hoped was only slightly more than average weight, wasn't "small." But it was the first time she ever felt what she secretly thought Cho Chang must have felt like every day of her life. Feather light and delicate. Graceful and made from things more delicate than frizzy hair and slightly improved teeth.

More wand work. A transfigured mirror. The sudden appearance of the reflection startling. Who was this feral thing suspended in place? Curls wild and tousled. The fear and surprise frantic in those honey brown eyes. That dark man behind her, his face so familiar but somehow new with all its surprises; like emotions that weren't contempt or disgust.

The look on his face was the exact opposite of disgust.

"What is the mirror for, sir?"

"Exactly what you asked for, pet."

The words to say she didn't understand died in her throat as clever hands tapped a slow rhythm at her collarbone. The light thumping dampened by the neck of her cardigan. Fingers slipping under the collar, brushing against her skin. Touch starved, flushed and desperate, she turned her head to try and capture his lips again only to find nothing. Teeth nipped at her ear, a low breathy chuckle her reward. "Eyes forward. Don't turn your head or close your eyes."

She turned back to face the mirror with thinly veiled reluctance. Her bottom lip snatched between her teeth the only way to stop the pout that threatened to give her away. Eyes fixed to the mirror in front of her, the embarrassment a rolling stone in her stomach. She could never find the courage to even keep the lights on when taking Ron to bed; and now she was staring at this man, his hands and the way they played this body she lived in. Like some coveted hand-crafted string instrument. They traced the curve of her waist, the soft plane of her stomach. They opened her cardigan and toyed with the buttons of her blouse. They casually slipped them free. Short nails lazily traced lines into the flush that rose across her chest. A whimper escaped her; because she couldn't look away. Because she didn't want to.

"I'm sorry, was there something else you wanted?" A playful lilt to his voice.

Another whimper. Begging this way seemed to get her closer to what she wanted faster.

"More?" And those hands skimmed her breasts and that voice in her ears and those waves pounding in her head sent the words drowning somewhere. The organized stacks of her mind flooded entirely with dark and playful submission. An eager sound of agreement slid from her lips.

"More." And those hands grabbed her, hard. Pads of his fingers doing their best to try and bruise her breasts through the lightly padded cups of her bra. She struggled against her points of restraint, gasping from the forcefulness of it. The knowledge of just how rough those hands she admired so much could be was intoxicating. Those hands and those fingers and her breasts heavy in them. The press of his body against her back sent her hips arching to meet him, and the knowledge of his own physical response filled her with something so familiar it felt almost out of place.

Accomplishment.

Those damn fingers worked their way under her blouse and there was simply too much for her brain to process. A scratch, a pinch, a moan, a plea. More. Hands and breasts and skin and fire and thunder and lightning. More; please Merlin have mercy on this little body, more. Hands and struggle and dear sweet holy mother why were those hands, those elegant beautiful horribly skilled hands, working into her knickers and playing across her sex and-

She breathed.

A small shuttering breath turned into a jagged cry of sweet mind-numbing release. Her body bowed against the restraint of the spell, eyes fixed to the mirror, determined even in the throws of merciful release to be a good girl. She watched the way her body pulsed, her eyes bright with manic joy. The lust that beat a war song between her thighs only seemed worse, despite the release.

She whimpered. She wanted more.

He smiled, some beautiful and terrible thing.

* * *

Severus released the charm with a casual flick of his wand. An arm slid around her waist and she stumbled against his chest, all wild hair and staccato breath.

"Fuck," Hermione shuddered.

"Language, pet," Severus chided.

"...Fuck, sir," She corrected herself.

He chuckled.

They stood there for a beat. Two. She tried to regain her breath, her higher brain functions, her bearings. She studied the weave of the cloth of his white button-down, the rhythm of his heartbeat, his breathing. Reality danced along the edges of her thoughts.

"Better?" He asked.

She shook her head. No, no this was decidedly not better. This was far worse than she could have imagined. She knew those hands and that voice and they had just done things to her body no one else had ever managed to do so quickly, so efficiently. A strange cognitive dissonance settled across her skin. Her professor. The man who had tormented her for years, who had scarcely deemed her worthy enough for anything other than bitter scorn or exacerbated acquiescence, had just brought her to screaming orgasm in the middle of some godforsaken loft in the middle of London after having been thought dead. No one knew she was here, and no one knew what they were up to.

She looked up into his face, all wide-eyed terror, and she knew she wanted more of it. This, she decided, was what users of heroin must feel like. Her touch starved body needed more of it and she was willing to do anything to get it. That was the trouble with heroin, wasn't it?

Severus saw it dancing behind her eyes, and it took every ounce of self-control not to bend her over the counter and take her. His lips curled and he twisted her hair in his fist. Pulled her head back gently and sank his teeth into that taught muscle of her shoulder where he knew she carried all her tension. The whimper she issued sent his stomach to his feet and back. It was glorious. He had missed it. He hated to admit how much he missed it. That was, indeed, the trouble with heroin.

He lead her to the futon. How this blasted thing had been permanently transfigured into his possession he still was unsure, but he had to admit, it had its charm. Currently, it's charm was her sprawled on it, her head tossed back, wild, tangled hair sprawled down the back of it, legs spread wide. It was almost too easy like this, he mused. There was hardly a hunt here anymore. He could smell it on her, and on the pads of his fingers. He hated it. He needed more of it.

Severus dropped to his knees in front of her, hands braced on her knees, mimicking her earlier posture.

"More?" He asked, as innocently as he was capable of.

Hermione chuckled, a deep throaty thing rough with arousal. She issued an intelligible grunt of agreement.

He slapped her across the thigh, all good will for her insolence burning quickly behind the need to finish claiming what was his.

She yelped in pain, the sting of it painted on her flesh. "Yes, sir!"

"I won't warn you again."

She nodded in agreement. "I understand, sir."

"See that you do."

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl," He said. What surprised him was how much he meant it. She was surprisingly good at this. Though he knew he was fooling himself if he thought for even the briefest of moments that Hermione Granger wouldn't be good at something she set her mind to.

What struck him often, even now as he sat mere inches away from her sex, was how easily she had accepted. He shouldn't have been really. Especially considering how quickly he had acquiesced all those years ago. All graceless desperation, needy in so many ways. Yet here he was again, so many years later, and still needy. Hungry for power, control, and something else he never quite found the courage to articulate within himself.

By some sheer twist of fate, some late karmic payment for all he had done, it was given to him. Gift wrapped in poly-blend trousers and simple cotton knickers. He dispensed with the wrapping quickly enough, enjoying the way she lifted her hips to awkwardly shimmy them off. He kept his hands on her legs, lest the temptation to close them to him prove too much. No sense in giving her any excuses to get herself into more trouble than she needed to. She had already done a wonderful job of digging herself into a very deep hole. One he intended to take full advantage of. One that reminded him of himself.

Severus had been 21, a child by his standards. All lank hair, thin hips, and cheekbones that could cut glass. He was exhausted by the games, by the nights of revels that left him hollow, and the days of endless research that left him desperate to understand. Severus hated that pompous blonde wanker and the way he always seemed to be in control. At the end of his rope, he threw an inkpot across the room, smashing it against the wall next to the other man's head. A dangerous move, considering the positions they were in. He craved that mark more than anything in the world, and the man he nearly assaulted had the final say on whether or not to give it to him. He had called Severus 'graceless, desperate and reckless'.

Snape shook his head. The nostalgia distracting him from his charge. He was grateful, he reminded himself. His ridiculous nose nuzzled inside of her thigh and the resulting sharp intake of air thrilled him. He teased her in a near perfect mirroring of the way she had him. Hammering the point home with teeth dangerously close to the apex of her thighs. The smell of her made him swallow, hard.

"Beg," He purred.

Somewhere, under the moan and the flinch and the uncontrollable shaking of her legs, the words came. Please, sir. Now, sir. I need it, sir. I can't, sir. Please, please, please. It was a start. He slid a finger slowly inside of her, pressing against her gently. He could feel the pulse of her and finally, finally, the dark and primal thing in him snapped. His tongue flicked across her clitoris and the sound she made in response was music.

He composed a symphony on her body with his mouth. It was hungry and eager. Built agonizingly slow. Keeping her teetering just on the edge, retreating when her breath hitched or the muscles in her legs tensed. Giving her just enough breathing room to frustrate her, before taking his leave to taste her again. Her hands wound through his hair, and he withdrew his finger. She whined above him, and he nipped at her, just enough to remind her that patience was a virtue and she had best learn it quickly if she wanted what he was going to give her.

Little did she know, he would do it anyway. For his own amusement, of course. He grabbed her by the hips, pulling her forward. Lapping at her core, punch drunk on the taste of it. He worked his tongue in faster, greedy circles. Teasing her as he edged her further along, only to stop suddenly and bask in his own smugness as she writhed and begged him to don't stop don't stop don't you dare stop, sir, please. He drummed the fingers of a free hand across her thigh, not quite ready to let the game be over just yet.

He looked up at her, her lip caught between her teeth. A reedy whine trembling in her chest. "Sir, Please! Please let me finish. I can't...I can't...I need...sir, please."

"As you wish, pet." He breathed.

And he went to that place of fingers and lips and seemingly little mercy. That strangled place where breathing isn't quite as important as the taste of them on your tongue and that primal urge to send them clattering down the sides of the cliff; to finish what you started. Never let it be said that Severus Tobias Snape wasn't merciful. Mere moments later, she came undone against his lips, and he was given his second trophy. His victory lap.

* * *

The smug bastard emerged from between her legs, face flushed, hair lank with sweat, plastered to the sides of his face. She tasted herself on his lips. It was a new, strange flavor. Like victory and sea salt, and some deep note of something she didn't recognize. She curled up on her side, bringing her knees to her chest as she tried to find her breath. Some wild, husky, manic laugh bubbled up from the depths of her, and it made her eyes crinkle with the joy and absurdity of it all.

"You'll stay here tonight." He said simply. That devious tongue darted out one more time to lick the last of her from his lips. "I won't have you alone and crashing after all of that."

She nodded. "Yes, Sir."

He sat next to her and gathered as much of her as he could fit onto his lap, petting her passion matted hair.

"More?" He asked, despite himself.

She shook her head frantically. "No, sir."

He smiled, some sweet, far thing.

.


	8. Character Study

Severus watched her sleep. He wasn't quite sure why he couldn't bring himself to put her in his bed. Something about boundaries he suspected. Some long held over twinge from nights spent with people too dangerous to keep around. Or the ones who kicked him out scant minutes after release, never quite allowing him the pleasure of a job well done. He often wondered in those days if it mattered if he was any good at it or not. They had all been groping around for something, and he was touch starved enough to let them.

None of them had looked quite like Granger did. With her wild hair, the color of burnished copper, and skin dotted with birthmarks in strategic places. Like some mapmaker had marked places of potential interest. Marred by the dark slash of a curse scar across her chest that he himself once healed, and the foul white etchings of a twice-dead madwoman down her forearm. Hips mapped by fine stretch marks from some rapid weight loss and subsequent gain; and the beginnings of fine wrinkles on the backs of her hands. He was fascinated by it all, as he always was by new bodies. New roadmaps to learn. New terrain to explore.

He didn't quite remember every body, nor did he want to. Not that his body count was so high, but rather some were taken or given in circumstances that he sometimes regretted in quiet moments like these. For all The Blonde's talk of consent, he had played by those rules fast and loose. Something Severus had never fully considered until his former student demanded he teach her again. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was doing the right thing. The worry often quickly banished by selfishness and something akin to homesickness.

Fingers cautiously inched into her hair. He used to think it a scouring pad, with its untameable volume and frizzy kinks. The feel of it reminded him of vaguely of candyfloss, if candyfloss had the audacity and substance to hold up caramel, but that still wasn't quite right. It was charming, in its own way. As she was. She wasn't always, he mused. Still unsettled by memories of her as a young girl, bouncing with an unbridled need for external validation. Those memories sat distantly behind the ones of her he formed in the last few months. The differences between them striking, but hauntingly similar. Similar enough to still his fingers for a moment. Again, the question tugged at him: Is this right? And again, he sneered at himself that he didn't care for things like 'right' or 'wrong.' How long he could continue to lie to himself, he wasn't sure.

Granger stirred under his hand, and he stilled. He gently slid his hand from her hair as she shifted to look up at him. The question in her eyes was plain.

"You can get up now, Granger," he said softly.

She exhaled a breathy sigh. "Thank you, Snape," she replied.

"I'd still like you to stay here for the evening," he said.

She swallowed. "Ok."

"Do you not-"

"-No, no it's," She trailed off for a moment. "What are we doing, Snape?" She asked, that old curiosity bubbling back from under the depths as her submission ebbed away.

He blinked, arching an eyebrow in surprise. "Exactly what you asked for, Granger."

"No, I mean, I know that, but what IS this? What are we doing? Does any of this mean anything? I've never-" The words caught in her throat.

He bit the inside of his cheek. Snapping at her to spit it out wouldn't do either of them any good. Instead, he crossed his legs at the ankles and stretched like a contented cat.

"-I've never slept with someone I wasn't in love with before. I don't-I have no idea what any of this means," She admitted finally, her voice shrinking as she tried to work out the words.

The corner of his mouth twitched at that. "What a coincidence, I've never slept with anyone I've been in love with," He said. The words were casual, brutal, but weightless.

She paused, shifting to sit on her knees next to him on the sofa. "You've-"

He shook his head, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. "Never."

She paused, and he swore he could almost hear the shifting of parchment in her mental files.

"I'd rather not, Granger. But to answer your question; it doesn't have to mean anything. Did you enjoy it?" He asked.

She looked away to the far wall, suddenly interested in the red bricks and neutral grout. A charming flush rose up her chest and into her cheeks. She crossed her arms against some unfelt chill. "Yes," She said finally.

"Have you enjoyed not thinking?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Are you learning to let go?"

"Yes, but what-"

"Then that is all it has to be, Granger. Consider this part of the lesson."

"Well, it's all bloody zen when you put it like that, isn't it?" She snapped.

"Granger-"

"I need a shower." She said simply, getting up from the futon. Opting to kick her trousers to the side as she proudly stalked to the bathroom.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine." She called over her shoulder.

He sighed. She wasn't fine.

Granger emerged from the bathroom nearly an hour later. Wrapped in an oversized white towel, she padded into the living space, damp footprints trailing behind her. Snape didn't recall his towels ever being quite so luxurious, and saw her wand hung limply in her hand. Leave it to her to transfigure his life to suit her tastes. First the futon, and now his damn bath towels. He tried to claw at the small shred of anger, to hold onto it and use it for something productive. But as he watched her, wide eyed and so small in that blasted towel, he found he couldn't keep it.

"I just needed some space to think." Her voice was tired and small. "It's overwhelming."

"What is?" He asked, perched behind the island in the kitchen, fingers loosely wrapped around the handle of a mug.

"This." She gestured in the space between them. "Being submissive. Letting go. Trying not to think too hard. It's difficult."

He nodded. "It is. There's a reason I don't do what you're doing anymore."

"Because it's too hard?" She asked, surprised. She shifted awkwardly, holding the towel and her wand in both hands in front of her.

"I don't like letting go." He said. He set the mug down and walked out from behind the island, keeping his distance from her. He wasn't sure if it was an absurd sense of modesty that kept him away or something else. With a tilt of his head, he beckoned her to follow him.

She padded along behind him, through a heavy curtain between 2 large supply shelves. The tingle of magic across her skin made her huff in amusement.

"A Notice-me-not Charm? Is that why I've never noticed it?" She asked, the regret immediate in her voice.

"How astute." The acid in the words pure reflex.

She let out an amused huff. "Of course you would ward your sleeping arrangements tighter than Gringotts."

"The space is open. You'd be a fool not to." He said simply.

The space behind the shelves, his bedroom for all intents and purposes, was smaller than she expected. The shelves of potions ingredients made the walls. It was simple, filled with a standard double bed and a simple wooden stool that served as a bedside table. A book and a rimless pair of reading spectacles sat atop it. A tall, slim chest of drawers opposite the bed. He tamped down on a strange old insecurity that bubbled up into his chest. That wild thing in his stomach lurching at the old invader called insecurity.

"Modern minimalist? I would never have guessed." Her smile barely hidden under a poor attempt at acidity.

"Do shut up, Granger." He growled.

"It's charming. There's no pretense to it," She said.

He blinked. No pretense. He opened the middle drawer and pulled out a black tee.

She managed to catch it with one arm as he flung it behind him. "Never stop surprising me," She said as the black shirt slipped over her head and over the towel.

He huffed. The strange return to modesty never ceasing to amuse him. He watched her shimmy the shirt down to just above her knees, and slip the towel out from underneath it. She snatched her lip between her teeth as she tugged the hem down and his stomach lurched. Boundaries indeed.

* * *

He laid on the futon for what felt like hours. Sleep left somewhere back in wizarding China. Left with the impression that she had passed out an eternity ago, with little protest. Her attempts at silent stalking might have been commendable if she had been trying to sneak past anyone else. As it was, the padding of her bare feet made him sit up.

"What is it, Granger."

She paused a moment. Two.

"I can't sleep." She said.

"Crashing?" He asked.

She paused again. "I'm not sure-I just-"

He could hear the shifting of her feet against the floor. "Come here, Granger."

She padded closer, a hand held out in front of her in the dark. His fingers found hers, and he pulled her down to him. She shifted awkwardly, somehow coming to straddle his lap. Her head rested in the curve of his shoulder. The contact was enough to drive the tension from her body fairly quickly. She signed into his skin.

His hands hesitated. Modesty was difficult in this position. It wasn't what he had intended, but he wasn't too keen on the idea of making her move either. Resigned, his hands skimmed her back. One coming to rest in the tangles of her hair.

"I forgot where I was and it was too dark and too quiet and it's like when the wind was in the trees in Dean and-" Her words came in a single breath, rushed, the edges shaking with something just left of fear. The wind in the trees sounded suspiciously similar to the way Lupin's howl sounded when she was in her 3rd year. The cold tore through the tent and howled so high and would die just as quickly as it came. It was always just too damn dark.

"Come back, Granger. Breathe." He said, his voice a low, slow wave. The rock of a tiny boat on a vast ocean.

She shivered under his hands and sighed, as if she was just granted the memory of warmth after having gone years without it. Inhale. Exhale.

"Again."

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

"Good girl." The words came out of him before he could stop himself.

Her breathing hitched. "I'm sorry," she whispered. For a lot of things.

* * *

Hermione decided to move out of the flat. No amount of _scourgify_ was going to get rid of the ghosts, and the strange misplaced feelings of obligation. She was out in a weekend, the bits of her life she cared to keep shrunken and tossed into a single suitcase charmed with her old standby undetectable extension charm. There was just enough in her savings for a studio, slightly closer to the Ministry. Breaking her lease set her back far more than she admitted to Harry; for fear of his overbearing need to throw money he didn't think he needed at people he thought needed it far more.

A brown bag of chips, a glass of blush wine, and a few careless flicks of her wand later, and she was settled. The old muggle phone sitting silent in the kitchenette. It wasn't much, but it was hers. Entirely and utterly hers. No familiar smells, no unseen ghosts. Though she was finally beginning to understand the constant need of wizards to have a fireplace.

Parchment with Arithmancy equations spread out across the floor. A flick of her wand expanded the vectors along the walls for her to analyze. Ensure all judicial pardons would stick post-posthumously, release the Snape Reports, negotiate with Rita Skeeter on a cover feature correcting her past reports. The vectors began to twist with the additional information. Even with unfavorable variables, they all ended at the same point: Severus Snape could come home. It wouldn't be easy, and there would be a lot of prep work to do at the ministry, but the little pulsing light that was the point at the end of the timelines all said he could come home.

But there was one more variable she had yet to test with the equation. One more she didn't dare let herself consider too deeply but felt compelled to add for the sake of analyzing every conceivable angle. A set of base calculations, one that considered her a part of his life. She tweaked it for romantic partnership, for friendship, and a variable in between that wasn't standard arithmancy; a wash of uncertain gray numbers and a jumble of complex calculations that tumbled over each other in uncomfortable values. She chewed her lower lip to bleeding as she calculated, the vectors spreading to life under her quill. Her hand finished with a flourish, and she let go of a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She tossed the new vectors to the wall, watching them twist with the others.

She laughed. She laughed until her stomach ached and tears stung her eyes and she wasn't actually laughing anymore.

* * *

"Aren't you the least bit curious about how he's doing?" Harry asked, an edge of hurt and anger painted along the edges. He ran his hands through his perpetually disheveled hair, gripping it slightly at the roots.

Hermione sighed, putting her mug down on the coffee table in Grimmauld Place. Even now, it amazed her that Ginny managed to convince him to re-do the place. The only concession: to leave Sirius' room as it was. A museum of familial nostalgia and guilt. The walls of the sitting room no longer covered in molding gray wallpaper, now a warm buttery yellow trimmed in white. White shelves lined with a small collection of medals and awards both he and Ginny had earned. Enchanted photographs of the Weasley clan, the Order, Neville, Luna, Hermione, Ginny and Ron scattered between them. Older photos of Harry's parents, Sirius and Lupin stood highest on the shelves. Just out of reach, but not too high to miss if you were looking for them.

She turned on the sofa to face him, legs crossed under her. She placed both hands firmly on his knees. "Harry Potter, look at me."

He did, turning to mirror her position.

"I think about him every blasted day. I think about him when I go in to work. When I make coffee in the mornings and sometimes forget it's just for me. When I go shopping and see burgundy jumpers in store windows. When the bloody winds turn to the west instead of the east. I miss him desperately, Harry. All the time. He was one of my best friends." Her voice cracked and she hated herself for it.

"They why…" Harry pleaded.

"Because I don't for one minute regret what I did. We wouldn't have worked. We were going to be miserable, and in an enchantment that would be incredibly difficult to break later. I left the right way. I did it like an adult, to his face. I kept both our secrets, while he has decided to splash a few of mine across a few choice newspapers. And I don't talk to you or Ginny or anyone about it because I don't want to drag anyone into the middle. But it hurts, Harry. It hasn't stopped." She found herself crying, and she hated herself even more.

The air between them hung heavy, filled with all manner of old pain. The kinds of pain you ignore for the right people, even when they caused it. Harry stuck his hands through it and closed the gaps between them, pulling her to his shoulder. "For a genius, you're an absolute moron, Hermione. There isn't a middle anymore. You're my friend. You always have been," The words barbed in his throat, and he coughed a humorless laughed despite himself.

"Do you get it now?" She asked. She looked into those striking emerald eyes and laughed through the last of the pain with what she found there.

He nodded. "You're my family."

Hermione pulled away, grabbing his head in her hands and pressing her lips to his forehead. His cheeks flushed scarlet, and he looked away.

They sat for a moment in silence. Both of them trying to find their footing again. Moments like these still new and raw between them. The naked honesty hard won in the Forest of Dean, where it had hung like lead and burned like fire against their chests, clouded and warped by sickly black darkness. It wasn't something they ever agreed to with words. Rather, it was a deep unspoken promise.

"You can tell him I'm ok." She said, finally. The tears having been wiped away on the cuffs of her jumper. "You...you can tell him I'm sorry."

Harry nodded, a small sheepish smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Thank you."

* * *

The owl was a bit of a shock. It's beak tapping earnestly, though politely, at the glass. Hermione opened the window, letting the small gray barn owl in. She recognized it as one of the Weasley owls, from George of all people. She read his neat, loose hand and smiled.

 _Hermione,_

 _I know I've been a prat. Well, frankly, we've all been prats. Harry was kind enough to remind us of this a few days ago, and well, he made some good points I couldn't very well ignore._

 _You hurt my brother. That remains a sin in the eyes of several gods, and a few important mortals that I can't exactly toss under the rug...but I also can't very well turn back on someone who was so important to us. All of us._

 _I'm sorry, Hermie. For all the wretched shite I've said the last few months. Both the things you heard and the ones you didn't hear…and the ones I may have accidentally said in front of Prophet reporters while drowning Ron's sorrows in cheap booze._

 _He misses you, you know. We all do. Family gatherings aren't quite the same without you. He may never say it, but he wants to see you. He'd never bring himself to write you and tell you these things himself, but I'm down a brother, and well, I can't very well let the ones I have left go off and be complete idiots forever._

 _Consider this the branch of an olive tree. Drop by the store when you're ready. He won't be there, I promise._

 _George_

She scrunched the parchment to her chest and exhaled.


	9. Not the Gambling Type

Hermione waved her wand and projected the calculations onto the far brick wall of the loft without a word. Fingers picked at the flesh of her thumb behind her back. Teeth nipped at the freshly healed skin of her lip. She watched as shining black eyes studied the graphs on the wall, his expression unreadable. Slim fingers traced a well-worn path across his mouth. She looked away, unable to separate the odd urge to brush his hands away and replace them with her own from the anxiety that roiled in her stomach. Giving him this would change everything. She debated for a week whether to tell him anything at all, for fear of ruining this precious escape he had granted her. This place where only the two of them existed in a timeless limbo.

But it wasn't timeless, and for all he had given her, she knew better than to lie. There were better ways to destroy herself.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Of course you did."

She blinked, the casual gesture still catching her off guard. "Excuse me?"

He shook his head. "Well done." It was a quiet admission, though one he gave with little consequence.

Her mouth went slack. The naked praise when she wasn't on her knees a first from him. She decided to note this in her mental files as a Momentous Occasion. Her shoulders squared, and she glanced quickly at the skin of her wrist to triple check that she gave nothing away. Still no glow, but little could suppress the brilliant, almost predatory, smile that spread across her face.

"Down, Granger." His tone mocking.

"Do shut up, Snape." The acid turned neutral by her smile.

She vanished the projection and handed him a sheaf of parchment with all the calculations. Including several she hoped he didn't look at too hard. Always the overachiever.

"So what will you do with it?" She asked.

"Settle some business abroad with the intention to return to London permanently." As if the answer couldn't possibly have been 'stay here cooped up in hiding forever'. Or, 'go back to Hong Kong and continue my existence as if none of this had ever happened.'

The smile leaked away from her face. "Then what?"

An elegant eyebrow arched in reply, as if the answer was so obvious it didn't even deserve the words to confirm it.

Her shoulders slumped. "You expect me to initiate the proceedings, don't you."

"Obviously." The word so damn alkaline it was lye on naked skin.

She bit her lip, ripping the last of the dry skin to peeling. A hiss of pain whistled through her teeth as she quickly tried to wipe away the blood with the tip of her tongue.

"Stop that," Snape said. The traces of lye gone, but the tone still clipped.

"What?" Hermione asked, the words muffled with her lip still in her mouth.

"That." He was up and across from her in two quick strides. Fingers firmly holding her chin in place. "Stop it."

She froze, unsure if he had ever willingly touched her when they weren't in their agreed upon roles. Her lip freed itself from her teeth and she stared at him, trying to read something in his features. She came up with very little, too distracted by the sudden clench in her stomach and the liquid feeling in her knees.

"The only one allowed to hurt you, pick you apart, or otherwise mark you is me, do you understand? I won't have you breaking my things."

A beat. Two.

She wondered vaguely if this is what it felt like to be thrown into the vast vacuum of space. It can take up to 15 seconds exposed to an oxygenless environment for the human body to recognize it has no air. It would quickly use up the remaining oxygen in the blood stream, assuming she didn't hold her breath. It would take maybe an additional 2 minutes for any permanent brain damage to occur. It had been roughly 5 seconds since the words were processed. She floated somewhere in the dark empty expanse of them, the only tether left to the planet the pads of his fingers, firm and warm against her chin.

"Your-" The word was a breathy sigh. A strange unspoken need.

"Things, yes," he said.

She could see something playing at the edge of his mouth, the light twitch that betrayed the ghost of a suppressed smile. The playful glint in those pitch eyes letting her know he knew exactly what he had said, and had zero intention of repeating himself.

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He released her gently. With a turn on his heel, he was away again, back to check on several of the cauldrons that bubbled on the work benches.

Hermione stood there and watched him for what felt like centuries. He didn't so much as glance at her as he finished bottling whatever the latest contract demanded. She actively fought against the instinct to bite her lip, instead, tapping her fingers in a senseless rhythm across them, teeth scraping across the tips of her nails. Two very different reactions fought desperately for control. On one side, she wanted to yell at him that she wasn't a 'thing.' Least of all 'his thing.' To draw very clear lines in the wet cement they stood on, with diagrams dictating exactly where each of them was supposed to stand. To build little lead lined compartments labeled with their roles and when they would be allowed to take things out of those compartments. To color code a schedule for 'pet time' and 'Granger time.'

On the other hand, she wanted to let him wash away the lines in the sand of the deserted island they stood on. To let the wind tear away the little compartments and diagrams and let the waters of the flood destroy everything. To surrender to the storm and rebuild the world into something chaotic and new. She opted to straddle the middle.

"Things?" She asked finally.

"Would you have preferred 'toy'?" He asked.

Well, that wasn't much better now, was it. "T-toy?" Blood pooled in her cheeks, her voice rising with something akin to panic.

"Fucktoy? Plaything? Mewling little slit? I could go on." The words deadly in their nonchalance. If she hadn't known better, she might have missed the low, dangerous purr that laced their way through them.

No, no none of that was any better either. "Pet is just fine, thank you! That's quite enough out of you."

The chuckle bubbled behind her as she fled to the bathroom.

* * *

"Mr. Manderly." She nodded in greeting. It was as pleasant as she could muster. Ground through teeth clenched in a wide smile that didn't quite reach Hermione's eyes.

"Ah! Ms. Granger! Just the woman I wanted to see." The tall, willowy form of Jacob Manderly towered in the doorway of the lift, forcing her back a step as he exited. "On your way to lunch?"

Salt strands threaded through his wavy, shoulder-length, muddy brown hair. A neatly trimmed goatee framed an impertinent, full mouth. His voice was all razor blades dipped in sucralose. Candyfloss and barbed wire. The voice of a man who would do absolutely anything to ensure that he got exactly what he wanted, and everyone loved him.

"No, just heading upstairs for a minute to deliver some sensitive files. I'll be back before you know it." She tried to sidestep him. The smile still plastered to her face.

He shifted, blocking her path to the lift. "I just wanted to let you know I'm terribly sorry about the whole House Elf thing." He wasn't. "We will get it on the agenda as soon as we can." They wouldn't. "In the meantime, make sure you concentrate on those Puffskein import reports. We might need to ban ones for overseas. The local breeders are starting to raise a fuss about 'Fancy Puffskein' breeds or someshuch." Only half of that was true. It didn't take much to figure out Manderly was startlingly xenophobic and would do anything to ensure British wizarding supremacy in all things, including bloody puffskeins.

She had bigger fish to fry than puffskeins. "Of course Mr. Manderly. The puffskein reports were submitted a week ago. I believe Abberley mentioned he delivered them to you last Friday?"

His smile widened, also not reaching his eyes. A spot of color on the tips of his ears the only giveaway. "I'll have to talk to Abberley about that and get back to you. Good work, Granger, as always. Glad to see the breakup with Weasley hasn't affected your work." With that, he sidestepped her again and strolled away from the lift.

She watched his deliberate gait down the hall through the gate of the lift as it pulled back and up from the floor. Restless legs paced around the tiny box as it carried her up to the Auror's offices.

"Of course it hasn't affected my work. The second I screw up is the second _you_ get to make an example of me to the department. I won't be humiliated by the likes of you, you scrawny, brown nosing niffler." The words ground out through clenched teeth as hands clutched the corners of the green ministry folders a little too tightly.

The lift stopped with a jerk and the gate slid open with a loud clank. Short, sensible heels clicked out into the brightly lit reception area that was the Auror's offices. Kingsley had done what many had thought impossible for eons; a complete revitalization of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, along with proposals for reforms throughout the rest of the Ministry. The end of the Second Wizarding War brought swift initial changes, and the progress was slowly starting to trickle down to the rest of the departments. Most resources directly after the war had been allocated to law enforcement for numerous reasons; ones everyone in the ministry felt necessary, including Hermione herself. Some nine years later, the Auror offices stood as the shining example for what she hoped would soon take place throughout the rest of the Ministry.

Flawless white marble walls and enchanted lamps that mimicked old Muggle electric globe bulbs gave the place a startlingly modern feel compared to the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures offices, with their dated green walls and flaming sconces. She waved at the wizard sitting behind the reception desk before making her way through a large archway and into the hallway leading to the main offices.

As she reached for the handle to Harry's office, the door swung open. She stepped back, finding herself face to face with Alvin Forrester. With a curt nod, he swept past her and back down the hallway, his black trench coat billowing behind him.

"Forrester." She growled.

Harry sat behind his desk, hands flat on the dark wood surface. A smattering of small Dark Detectors sat in a neat line, flanked on either side by an old tiny model of a Firebolt, and a small framed photo she knew was of the second generation of the Order of the Phoenix. His face was slack, mouth slightly agape in something akin to shell shock.

She blinked. "Harry? What's wrong? Are you ok?"

"What?"

"Harry, please."

"Hermione."

"Harry James Potter you will tell me what on earth has you looking like you've just seen the world end right this instant or I will hit you."

He blinked, clarity coming back behind those brilliant emerald eyes. "Forrester. He-He just gave me a promotion."

She yelped with glee, slamming the folders down on the chair and wrenching him up into a fierce hug. "Harry that's brilliant! Congratulations!"

He shook his head. "I-"

"Don't you dare try to say you don't deserve it." She said, her hands still wrapped around his head, holding him to her chest.

"I mean-"

"Harry."

"Hermione!" He yelped, trying to pry himself out of her grip. "No, it's-They want me to lead the entire department." His voice was small, notes of uncertainty crackling through it.

She let go, stepping back to the other side of his desk. "They, I'm sorry, what? Harry, that would make you the youngest head of the office in history! This is astounding!"

The news continued to sink in, the realization slowly dawning across his face. "It means I might actually be able to get some damn real work done for a change." He said, a small smile playing on his lips.

She frowned. "It also means they passed up Forrester for the position, doesn't it."

He nodded, smiling even wider. "It means he can't make my life miserable anymore."

"Well, he can try."

"He can try, but he can't stop me." A giddy note had worked its way into his voice.

"No, no he can't stop you." A twinge of jealousy thrummed in her chest. She knew Harry had worked so hard the last 9 years since the end of the war, almost never stopping to fix the wrongs other people had wrought. Making sure justice was carried out in the fairest ways he could guarantee. He had earned this, and more. Before him, the void that was left behind by Gawain Robards just after the war had rendered the department in desperate need of leadership. A series of temporary heads who were little more than glorified record keepers that reported directly to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry _had_ earned this, but as with all things, she wondered just how much being The Boy Who Lived helped him get to where she wanted to be that much faster. She shook the doubt from her head.

"The timing couldn't have been better." She said, picking up the green folders and sliding them onto his desk. "We can finally push forward with these."

"The Snape reports?" He asked.

"The Snape reports."

* * *

"We need to talk about Harry." Hermione's voice was small, guarded and wary into the receiver of the phone.

"Is that why you refused to come do this in person?" Snape asked, his voice tight and muddled in her ear.

"I didn't feel like getting yelled at again, no." She said simply. "Besides, I do have my own home that I like to be in on occasion."

He paused, considering the words for a moment. "Fine. What about Potter."

"He was promoted to Head of the Auror Office today."

"Joy."

"No, Snape, please, this is important. The calculations I made were dependent on some kind of trigger. I thought it would have been our start of the proceedings, but no, this is the trigger. We can't stop now. You either have to let it go now, and let the proverbial chips fall where they may, or risk ruining the results we have."

"I didn't expect you to be the gambling type, Granger."

She shook her head, fingers playing with the cord of the phone nervously. "I'm not. I'm worried, but I think this is our best shot because, well, I may have already mentioned the reports again to Harry."

"You WHAT?" He growled before he could stop himself.

"That kind of response is exactly why I called and didn't do it in person. Harry and I have worked on these for the last 9 years, Snape. He has championed for you tirelessly and not once did he stop. The thing that's stayed his hand is the damn higher-ups in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He's in a position now to force their hand. It's our best chance."

He paused again.

"This is our best chance?" He asked, a note of defeat in his tone.

"I believe it is, yes."

"I'm trusting you, Granger."

The line went dead.

"I know." She said to the dial tone. A tired sigh escaped her as she hung up the phone on the cradle.

The sofa was a warm respite. A small oasis cradling her tired body. She curled into a single cushion, legs propped up on the arm, feet kicking restlessly.

"HERMIONE!" The floo flashed vivid green, and Ginny's voice rang through loudly. "ARE YOU HOME? HERMIONE PLEASE!"

She tumbled off the sofa, running over to the small fireplace. "Yes! What on earth is going on? Are you ok?" She sat on the floor and scooted closer to the firebox.

"I HAVE NEWS! OH HERMIONE!"

She put her chin in her hands. It obviously wasn't bad news.

"HERMIONE! I'M PREGNANT!"

A nearly inhuman shriek of joy filled the tiny flat. "Oh, Ginny! Congratulations!"

"All the diagnostic charms came back healthy. 4 weeks, can you believe it? After all this time." Ginny's voice cracked under the weight of it. Harry and Ginny had been trying for at least the last few years to no avail. "I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me."

Hermione laughed. "You come from good stock, Gin. There was no way it wasn't going to happen. I'm so happy for you! And today of all days! I assume Harry told you about the promotion."

"He did, sometime after I assaulted him with this. We're both rather overwhelmed." Her voice was strained somewhere between ecstasy and terror.

Hermione quietly wondered if all new parents felt that way. "Do you need anything?"

"No, not yet thank you. We just wanted you to be one of the first to know. I've got to run, we still need to floo Mum and Dad."

"Don't let me keep you. Good luck! And congratulations again!"

The floo went cold, Hermione found herself unable to move. That strange cord of jealousy thrumming across her heart again. Her best friends, getting everything they ever wanted. A sharp contrast to her, alone, in a tiny flat, with a charmed bookshelf and a warm glass of wine untouched on the coffee table. She wondered, not really for the first time, if she made a mistake. If she had thrown off the course of her own life by casting off the shackles of domesticity in favor of this strange kind of freedom.

Freedom wasn't without loneliness, and perhaps for the first time since she left, she felt truly alone. She glanced over at the phone and wondered just how much of herself she had thrown at Snape's feet out of fear of said loneliness. The ocean they swam in seemed so much less scary compared to that.

Deep down, she knew it wasn't quite loneliness. It was something more akin to nostalgia. Wishful thinking on the dreams of a much younger version of herself. A version that wanted some kind of family; the kind that looked very much like a child's crayon drawing, bright, colorful and ill-defined. Her chances of having that version of a family were gone the second she ripped herself out of that dress, and the sting of realizing she let it go in favor of this vast uncertainty was crippling. She was not the gambling type.

Yet here she was, sitting back and watching other people cash in on their bets. Maybe it was time for Hermione Jean Granger to toss the dice.

She looked at the phone again and smiled.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** Would you look at that, a new chapter in under 100 days! A new record, I think.

Some notes: In my unrelenting strive to be cannon compliant, I overlooked birth dates. So we're bumping back the first Potter spawn by a few years for the sake of artistic license. Forgive me.

All your comments continue to inspire me and fill the cold, cracked thing in my chest with warm squishy feelings of joy and accomplishment. I'm so glad so many of you seem to be enjoying the story so far. Please continue to feed my ego, as the poor thing is a fathomless pit and lives to please you.

Also, I'm still looking for a beta reader! If you're interested, chances are you've got the job. If there are any rediculous errors that I seemed to have missed, let me know!


	10. Homework - Pt 1

"I'll be leaving for Hong Kong in the morning," Snape said.

Hermione lay curled on half of the futon, her head resting heavy on Snape's thigh. The backs of her own thighs still stinging and the post-orgasm waves slowly ebbing as she tried to crawl her way back into herself. She turned her head, nuzzling him like a contented cat. Leaving would mean time would continue ticking onwards, and progress be damned. She wanted to live in this limbo where only the two of them existed. In this amorphous space where for once in her life, nothing hurt in ways she didn't want it to, and everything from before this Snape was just a distant, foggy haze. A strange, heavy vice gripped her chest as he said it. An even stranger noise escaped her. Some small, sweet declaration that she wouldn't dare give him with words.

"Will you miss me?" He asked.

"Of course, sir." The words small, quiet, with something akin to longing laced around the edges. Of course she would miss him. What an idiot question, especially with her face in his lap and her hands curled into small fists as the fog started to lift and the heavy, dream-like feeling began to recede from her limbs.

She forced her body up, coming to straddle his lap in a position that she found she never wanted to leave. Her knees buried in the cushions, thighs against his hips. Her forehead dipped to his. "Who will handle me when you're gone?"

A small smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You will handle yourself."

She blinked and pulled away slightly, trying to read his face. Only small signs hidden in the corners of his eyes, the curve of his lips and the way his fingers paused for just a moment in their ministrations gave him away. That look again; that wicked wild thing that promised agony and bliss.

"I'm giving you homework, pet."

She crinkled her nose.

"What's this? The Brightest Witch of her Age suddenly doesn't want a mountain of homework?" An amused chuckle wove its way through the words.

If she could only transfigure that laugh into a cloak and wear it like battle armor, she could have done anything. Fly a broom without wanting to expel every meal she had ever eaten. Destroy the Ministry and build it again in her own image. Learn to fry a proper egg. "Pets don't do homework," she said, smiling at the cheek of her own voice.

He brushed his nose against hers. "This one does, if she wants to be rewarded when I return."

Damn him and his bribery. Her head tilted in an unspoken question.

"You will write twenty minutes every night. I don't care what you write, nor do I care for length. Just write."

"Is that all, sir?" she asked.

He hummed in agreement.

She nodded in understanding. A beat, two. "May I ask for something, before you leave, sir?" The words small, her eyes fixed firmly on his lips.

"You can always ask, pet. Whether or not you get it is a different matter entirely."

"Will you kiss me before you leave?"

Something passed across his features. She could have sworn it was something that lived between nostalgia and pain. Some sweet and distant thing with a touch of surprise. "When did you come by such disarming charm?" He asked, the words breathy.

Honey eyes blinked in confusion. Hermione Granger was a lot of things. She wasn't sure charming was one of them. Before she could protest, he obliged her request. She was starting to wonder if his mouth was laced with some kind of vaguely sweet poison. One that had to be administered with a painfully slow burn. One that pulled glorious lust up through her from the tips of her toes and concentrated on her tongue.

As she pulled away, the words came. "You can get up now, Granger." A small thread of regret. A shard of reluctance.

She stilled. Their positions compromised as she found herself with control again. Warring factions of propriety and need battled in her soul. The shadow across his features drew him back into himself. Back into the lead-lined box that labeled him clearly as Snape. Roll the dice, Granger. Her hands twined through his hair, forcing his mouth to hers. It was rage and reckless need and gracelessness. It was 'don't go' and, 'please please please.' It was hallelujah and hosanna.

When she pulled away, finally, his face was as flushed as she had ever seen it; charming spots of pink high on those sharp cheekbones. Breath stuck in his chest. Something boyish, playful and terrified, glazed over those inkwell eyes. "Are you mad, Granger?" There was no venom in it. It was harmless fluff. Like a child daring her to cross the line again and chase him around the playground.

A shy smile played its way across her face and into her eyes. "Quite possibly." Tag. You're it.

* * *

Severus watched her disappear down the lift shaft and suddenly the world was far too large. He stood there for an inappropriate amount of time, not quite sure where this feeling of longing came from. He had exactly what he wanted from her: a worthy distraction, a way home, his darkest needs delivered intravenously. He wasn't in this for anyone other than himself. So why was he still standing here, watching her leave, feeling like some idiot schoolboy with his heart in his throat?

He ran his hands through his hair. He had very little to compare the strange clenching in his chest to. The Evans specter lacked this kind of relaxed sweetness. That specter was desperate, one that he normally felt the second anyone let him touch them. It was still there but muted. It was almost pleasant, not feeling as though he needed her to continue breathing. He didn't need her, but he wanted her, and that's what all the fuss was about.

It was all too foreign. People always took what they could get once they knew how good he was, but few stayed and kept giving the way she did. She kept giving and demanding more to learn, and he would keep taking what the could get and teaching everything he knew because that's just what he did. It's what he was designed for. Even when he knew the good wouldn't last. Even when his own stupidity and desperation forced his hand. Even when everything was taken from him, he gave it until there was nothing left but a painful need to make sure they stayed.

This wasn't how any of this was supposed to have played out. He was supposed to be the one taking everything and, for once, leave them with nothing. Instead, he was standing in front of a lift long gone nearly pulling his hair out because she kept fucking surprising him. She was supposed to be nothing more than a key to indulging his own homesickness. So why the fuck did his chest hurt when she left.

The flesh memory of those impossibly soft lips still danced across his mouth. He cursed, turned quickly on his heel and stalked back to the rear of the loft. He had a long way to go and she was just another in a long line of people demanding things of him. The farther away from her, the better.

He kept chanting that to himself, hoping he could eventually make himself believe it. He was so very fucking small and the world was so damn large.

* * *

Hong Kong was a hell of a place. The walled city of Kowloon even more so. Nothing made Severus feel quite the way Kowloon did. The wizarding city within a city seemed to breathe with the power of every witch, wizard, beast and being within its walls. It was frenetic, electric, different than the wizarding communities back home. Kowloon didn't care about anyone in particular, but Severus found he cared very deeply about it. The very nature of its existence to hide things, and it had hidden him the last 7 years. From what, he couldn't quite remember. At first, it was everything. From the law, the ghosts of his former masters, what was left of the Order, Potter. The city had opened its walls to him, and he let it fill the cracked and empty spaces in his chest. It didn't care who he was, or where he came from. It just accepted him, and that was all he ever really wanted anyway.

He made his way down one of the numerous narrow alleyways. Signs powered by alchemical components lit his path. Long strides and light footfalls carried him to a narrow shop, lit with bright red and gold alchemical neon signs that read Sanxing Apothecary in both Roman letters and simplified Chinese. He pushed open the door, the light tinkle of a bell announcing his entrance.

The walls were lined with countless containers of potions ingredients. Some indigenous to the region, but much more from all around the world. Clear glass counters surrounded them, filled with even more ingredients, along with several ready-made potions, balms and medicines. It smelled vaguely of dirt, sandalwood incense, and sweat. He loved it.

" _Welcome welcome! One moment please!"_ A shrill voice called from the back in Cantonese.

He leaned against the glass counter "It's just me, Xi." He braced himself for impact.

"Severus, you _useless_ , skinny son of a bitch! You leave me here with no help for months when you said you'd only be gone a few weeks! And you dare show that _stupid_ face in my shop after all I've done for you! _You should be ashamed. All you British are the same._ " A flawless mix of Cantonese and English insults continued in a torrent as the witch yelled from the back.

Xi Ngai was absolute power shoved into a tiny container, only just coming to the center of Severus' chest. A hurricane barely contained inside someone's old aunt. Her pin-straight silver hair braided, tossed over her shoulder. Sharp black eyes bore into him as she swept out of the back room and came at him, finger poking his chest. "And you have the nerve to come back here looking like a _goddamn cat_ caught with a fish?"

"If you're going to yell at me, Xi, please stick to one language." He drawled, amusement painted cleanly across his features.

"How many months you've been gone? You left me in a bind, Severus." She crossed her thin, corded arms across her chest. Voice caught somewhere between a pout and a growl.

"I know, Xi. Circumstances-changed."

She regarded him for a moment and smiled. "So you can go home now?"

He couldn't help but answer her smile with his own. "I can."

She hit him, a surprisingly heavy-handed open palm strike to the arm. "Good. Kowloon doesn't need you and your surly moods and your long legs taking up so much space. Why even come back anyway?"

"You wound me. You think I'd leave you with nothing, after all you've done for me?"

She made a clucking noise with her tongue. "No. You're a good boy. Annoying. Too moody. But a good boy. You came back to find me a replacement as good as you? Not going to happen."

"No one is as good as I am." He crossed his arms, allowing himself the moment to wallow in his own smugness. His arm still stung.

"Cocky little shit, don't be annoying." She admonished. "I hate that you're right. You better find me someone good. While you're here, get back there and help me finish up. We'll go out tonight when the work is done." With a quick turn on her heel, she was back behind the counter and hurrying off into the back of the shop. Xi was a lot of things, but somehow she always managed to be right. He wasn't sure how, but he enjoyed it all the same. It was a welcome change of pace, knowing where he stood.

Not for the first time since he arrived back in Kowloon, he wondered if he should just stay. The city had been good to him, better than anywhere else had been. Its indifference and hard edges exactly where he fit best. But there was something to be said for familiarity. He just wanted to go home. Britain, for all its shitty weather, bad food, and xenophobia, was home. He was getting too old to be a rolling stone.

He followed her through a doorway and into the back of the shop. A huge, brightly lit brewing lab with several large cauldrons on work tables. The space surrounded by shelves loaded with ingredients, scales and other tools of the trade.

"Sin-Feng! Lazy boy, you're lucky today," Xi announced.

The slim, younger man turned at the sound of her voice. Thick black hair matted to his face with sweat. "Severus!" Sin-Feng yelped. "Oh thank god, please, Xi is a monster when you're not here."

"Xi is a monster regardless of who is around." Severus mused. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and went straight to work. A familiar comfort in the frantic pace of the lab.

Xi sucked her teeth. "Ungrateful men."

* * *

" _Your Cantonese is still shit, Severus,_ " Xi said, turning the lazy susan. Baskets loaded with an array of dim sum spun slowly. She stopped at a basket and plucked a steamed bun with a pair of chopsticks.

" _It's because I've been away from the food too long,"_ he said, taking another soup dumpling from the table. " _I forgot how bad food can be."_ His accent was still not quite as smooth as he would have liked. It made him self-conscious in ways he had never needed to be about speaking. His voice one of the few things he took pride in.

" _Is that why you got so skinny again?_ " She teased.

" _It's horrible, Xi. I forgot we made food that doesn't taste like anything. There's no chili oil anywhere._ " He bit into the top of the dumpling and nearly sighed with the joy of it.

" _Finally developed a taste for spice have you? Remember when you could barely eat congee_?" She asked. She made quick work of the steamed bun, slathering it in far more chili oil than appropriate.

" _There is no congee either. It's a wasteland_ ," he lamented.

" _So why go back? It seems like all you ever find back there is pain._ "

" _There is something I need to do_." Even to his ears, the excuse sounded stupid.

" _Don't lie to me. We're past that. It's ok to say you just want to go home_ ," she said. The words were surprisingly gentle.

A small smile escaped him, despite himself.

* * *

Fifteen potioneers, Five Masters, two viable candidates, one cranky Severus.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, the exhaustion of the day inching up his neck. Sin-Feng slid a handless cup across the workbench to him. He accepted it with a grunt of gratitude, wrapping long fingers around it, thankful for the warmth.

" _I didn't think you'd test every single one with something so difficult,_ " Sin-Feng said, vanishing the contents of several cauldrons.

" _I meant what I said. I won't leave you both without someone competent to take my place_ ," He said.

" _They were all competent,_ " Sin offered.

" _Some were adequate. It is not the same thing,_ " he grumbled. " _This city is huge and there_ _are only five master's level potioneers_?"

" _No one wants to work in a lawless apothecary._ "

Severus wasn't sure if Sin hand meant it to sound as defeatist as he did. " _Xi is the law_."

Sin laughed, picked up a clipboard and began to take inventory. " _The law._ "

" _What is it you say about ears and burning, Severus?_ " Xi asked as she levitated a large crate of something into the room.

He took a sip of his tea, green, and suppressed a sigh. " _That only works if people say bad things about you. I value my life too much to dare._ "

" _Did you find me a new work husband?_ " Xi asked.

" _He found us two. We will probably need both of them to do all the work Severus does-did_ ," Sin said as he began to unpack the create.

Xi sucked her teeth. " _Two! What, do you think this place is made of gold?_ "

Severus snorted. " _We all know it's not a problem._ "

She grumbled. " _Easy for you to say, you don't have to pay them_."

* * *

He thought about her in moments like these. Moments when he was alone and the world was too quiet. When sleep was elusive and his limbs were restless and the ache in his neck was too much to ignore. He threw an arm over his head and sighed. Neon from the world outside played at stripes across his pale chest in reds, purples, and golds. The cooling charms he bothered with weren't ever quite enough for the gritty humidity that pummeled the single room flat he rented.

The memory of her hair in his hands made his fingers twitch against his stomach. Those sharp eyes with honey and cognac, always with their unspoken questions. Lips parted in surprise, in pain, in bliss. He shook his head. It was one thing when she was in front of him. It was another when he had to contend with two very different images of her in his head. This one warred with the memory of that same hair in a frizzy halo around a too-young face. Those too-small hands waving incessantly, demanding his attention. Those same lips set in a grim line of determination, those same eyes darting furiously across pages. Pale, thin legs sprinting across stone floors, the clacking of penny loafer heels echoing in her wake. The cognitive dissonance of the two Grangers that lived in his head making him dizzy.

That Granger begat his Granger, and it was a strange thing to watch. His Granger was battle hardened. The naivete stripped away by things bigger than the both of them. Some constant thin layer of pain lay just under the surface of her skin; under the scars and the beauty marks and the fine lines he enjoyed. She had been honed like a fine blade into the thing she was now. This thing designed for victory at all costs. This thing exhausted by pretense and expectation. He recognized it, and he wanted it. He deeply enjoyed watching it bend and tremble under his hands. Watching it fall apart around his fingers. Stealing its breath and hearing it beg for more of whatever it was he felt like giving it.

He wondered what he would find when he came back home. If she would be so willing once the proverbial cat was out of the bag. If she would stand with him when the world began to shake. It was a useless thought. Of course she would. But he didn't want her there out of some sense of obligation. He wanted her there because she wanted to be there. If the only hand he had to play to keep her was a firm one, then he'd play it. He wasn't above using what he had to keep what he wanted.

His train of thought stopped abruptly. When had she become His Granger, and when did she become a thing he wanted?

 _Fuck._

* * *

 **A/N:** Severus was a little temperamental at all the Harry time we had the last chapter and demanded his own. I've been on a kick about the Walled City of Kowloon for a good while now, so I decided to play a bit with the concept. I've strayed outside of canon with some OCs, which wasn't something I ever intended to do, but it was quite a bit of fun. I'm going to rather miss Xi. I hope you all enjoyed it and/or will forgive me.

Thanks again for all the comments and favorites. It's really wonderful to know people enjoy this experiment I embarked on nearly a year ago (in its current form.)


	11. Homework - Pt 2

Day 1:

 _I wasn't sure how to address these letters (?) (Journals?) or whether or not you would actually read them. It seems counter productive to have me write all this with the assumption that you won't. Though I guess the point of the exercise is to make me stop thinking and just DO a thing, even when you're not here._

 _If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was almost sweet. You're still too much of a bastard for an adjective like sweet. Though I suppose it's similar to the way some people like dark chocolate and chilis, or peaty scotch. I'm not sure if it makes sense to go as far as to say there is a flavor profile here, but maybe it's something to think about._

 _I never did care much for dark chocolate. Or chocolate in general, really. Harry and Ron always thought I was stunted for never developing a ravenous sweet tooth._

 _Ron….I_

Oh _thank god, the timer is up._

Day 6:

 _Manderly is a giant shit eating cock and it is by the sheer grace of forces much larger than myself that I haven't shoved him down a lift shaft. The son of a bitch thinks he is going to stop me. Nothing stops progress. Nothing. And nothing short of my heart exploding is going to stop my push for a Bill of Rights and reclassification of House Elves._

 _You're going to laugh at me, but I don't bloody well care. It's just not right for sentient beings to be subjugated for the financial exploits of humanity. It wasn't right when muggles did it to other muggles and it's sure as hell not right for us to do it either._

 _I've put it aside for years. To attain my N.E. . To help with the Ministry overhaul. To help with legal defenses and prosecutions. All the while these poor house elves haven't been able to benefit from all the good we've done._

 _I am under no illusion that life should somehow be fair. It's not. But damn it justice will be served._

Day 10:

 _The books have mentioned a thing called "Sub space" and I think I finally understand what it is. It's that floating place where everything outside of whatever it is that we are doing doesn't matter. It's the buzzing in my head that feels like white noise or like laying on my back in the ocean. It's a wonderful place. Meditative almost. Though I'm not sure Zen monks ever intended for us to transcend thought and suffering through spanking, I am not above taking the shortcut to enlightenment if it means more of it._

 _Or maybe one of those pretty suede floggers I saw in Care and Control. Those seem fun. Or maybe those shibari ropes? They're really quite beautiful when executed properly...not that I have any idea of improper ropes. What of four point restraints? It all seems so excessive, but I suppose that's the point. I'm sure charms could produce the same effect. Or even transfiguring something of value to someone and using it to inflict pain._

 _….please don't use that idea._

Day 22:

 _I never thought there would be a time in my life where I would write the words "I miss Severus Snape."_

 _I am being foolish._

 _You owe me nothing._

 _I need someone to handle me properly._

Day 25:

 _I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell him you're alive and we need to release the full reports to the public. I have an appointment with Kingsley in 4 days. Oh, and this is 2 days after my hearing for the House elf bill of rights, which the bastards sprung on me this morning because that scum-sucking weasel-faced bag-of-sentient-dildos, Manderly, didn't think I'd be ready without proper notice._

 _Idiot man. I will destroy him. I've been building this case since I was 15 years old._

 _I think once it passes I will quit the department. Go back to doing more proper legal work. There's still so much legislative work that needs to be done. Or maybe I'll go on holiday. I'm not sure I can keep going like this._

* * *

"...This is why the elves MUST be reclassified. We would be continuing hundreds of years of oppression in a climate that demands progress. Wizards have a duty and a responsibility with the systems we create to be fair and just to beings and creatures alike, and to deny a sentient people's the rights and liberties to which they are owed...well, gentlemen and ladies of the Wizengamot, we all know what happened the last time bigotry was allowed to continue unchecked."

She was ferocious, pacing in slow, calculated steps around the court chambers. Face all stern control, even as she casually shrugged the last of her arguments. A dirty tactic, one she almost balked at using. One that reminded her too much of him. There was little regret in the decision, watching as several members of the Wizengamot flinched. Their own guilt heavy on their faces. Good, she thought, let them face it. Somewhere behind her, she could feel Manderly pouting.

"All in favor of approving the measure?" Kingsley asked the court. He struggled to keep the small smile from his features as he looked at her.

Plenty of hands, followed by a chorus of affirmatives took the chamber.

"Those opposed?"

A far fewer number of hands along with, what she hoped, less resounding declines.

"The Ayes have it. The reclassification of House elves from beast to beings is hereby approved. Thank you all." Kingsley's gavel struck the podium, and the Wizengamot was adjourned. Kingsley descended the podium and she crossed the chambers quickly to meet him.

"Congratulations, Ms. Granger, I do believe this marks your 10th victory in these chambers."

She couldn't keep the smile from her face any longer. "Thank you, Minister. I appreciate you all hearing my case on such short notice." She dared a not-at-all subtle glance at Manderly. He stood near the entrance of the chamber, engaged with one of the other members of the Wizengamot.

"Easy, Hermione. The man isn't very bright. We can't be too hard on him," He said softly.

Her eyes narrowed into angry slits. "Oh yes, we can. He's a bigot, sir, and I have suffered enough of them."

He nodded. "I cannot argue with you there. I must be off. Are we still on for the 10th?"

She glanced around the chamber, with its heavy dark stone and imposing gallery seating. "Could I possibly call in that favor you owe me and push it back a few days? I've spent the last 48 hours living and breathing this case and haven't slept more than a few hours."

He smiled. "How does next Tuesday sound?"

She began to follow his lead out of the chamber "That would be incredibly generous of you, and I would hope this doesn't hurt my request in any way."

"You've not told me a thing about what we need to discuss. Should I be worried? You've almost always given me enough of a preamble to consider. Something I've always appreciated."

She looked down at her feet as she walked. "It is….highly sensitive information, sir."

He paused foot in mid stride. "Should I be worried, Hermione?" The thread of disquiet covered in substantial confidence.

"I do not believe so, but I worry about the...oh hell, I've never been good at secrecy, Kingsley. Just trust me on this?"

He continued walking. "Get some sleep. Take a long weekend. I'm sure whatever it is can wait a few days."

She sighed. "Thank you."

* * *

She hated port keys. Not nearly as much as flying, but the unsettling pull around her middle always left her with a vague sense of nausea and a weird, wobbly feeling in her legs that lasted just several moments too long. Apparating the distance would have left her too exhausted to enjoy any of the weekend, and she was determined to at least enjoy some of it.

There was something about Paris that she always loved. Something about the airy contempt the city had for everyone in it, even its natives. The erratic streets, the carbohydrates, the coffee that rattled her nerves, the smell of cigarette smoke that never seemed to linger longer than a moment. The way the city made her stand up straight and put on some god damn lipstick. It smelled like freedom. Real, unadulterated freedom. The anonymity was intoxicating.

The hotel was modest, a small bed with crisp white sheets, a small television mounted to the wall across from the bed. Double windows that opened onto a narrow balcony that overlooked equally narrow streets. She kicked off her shoes, threw several paper bags onto the bed, and tossed herself next to them, the guttural huff of air as she landed far louder than she intended. Everything ached. A bone deep weariness she hoped to nurse in her seclusion over the next two days.

She sat up, dragging her purse to her with her foot. Her wand, a notebook, and a ballpoint pen joined the paper bags.

Day 27:

 _I went to Paris._

 _I'm not sure why I came to Paris._

 _I just needed to leave. The urge to run hasn't hit me in a long time. Paris swallows me whole every time I'm here. Even if it's just to watch art house movies in a tiny hotel room and eat baked goods for several days. Paris doesn't demand anything of me except to fumble through its language. I can fumble through enough to get a coffee with too much sugar and a croissant._

 _I missed croissants._

 _My parents took me to Paris once in my 4th year. We didn't stay in the city long before going to the countryside, but it was enough. I always wanted to go to visit the Musee Rodin. Wander around the sculpture gardens and just….breathe. To breathe the same air as The Gates of Hell. Astounding, if you think about it, that we live in a world where magic is real, and yet wizards talk little of art. Have any wizards created art? Is art still art if you create it with a wand? I think it must be, right? Magic is an extension of ourselves, so how could it not be?_

 _But I am no artist. There is little sense to it._

 _When are you coming home?_

* * *

The thing about intrusive thoughts is they are intrusive. They brute force their way into the consciousness with complete disregard for the current train of thought. Hermione was used to them at this point. The wind in the wrong direction with the right smell would take her out of a gleeful analysis of legal proceedings and leave her with a strange wetness behind her eyes as she was suddenly brought back to one of any number of things. Nights in the forest, a knife to her arm, the scattered rubble and gore sprayed across the grounds of her favorite place on earth. The cold waxy faces of her friends, a moment of pure quiet joy in the library, the caress of a hand up her back. None of them made sense, and none of them related to each other. The first thought always the worst, breaking the carefully crafted dam around her consciousness, creating a flood of often unrelated, unrelenting images that stopped her heart for just a nanosecond.

The thought this time was fiery red hair and the faint smell of spearmint. It came hidden in a line of dialogue, some Muggle sportscaster yapping excitedly about football on a local news segment. It struck a chord across her stringy heart. Her chest tightened with it, breath hitched hard in the back of her throat. The note was bitter and black, lukewarm, like tea left on a side table too long with an intent to drink.

She cursed. The whole point was not to think about either of them, yet here she was, a sharp wetness in her eyes and a clenched shaking fist. Her wand was in her hand before she knew it. A wordless curse sent the television smoking, the smoke quickly sent on an invisible draft out the window. Next went the mirror, shattered bits of glass glistening in the lamplight. Then the desk, splintering slowly, hairline fractures splintering across the linoleum top before the entire thing burst into pieces.

The thought of that Raven hair and wood smoke cut across the red and spearmint but did nothing to stop her. It felt too good to break things. To shatter the things that couldn't fight back. Maybe, she wondered, that's why Snape liked the things he did.

She realized the opposite was true, but only well after she was spent, the only thing left standing in the hotel room the bed she laid on. It was never as much fun putting it all back together after you broke it. The pieces never quite fitting together quite the same way, even if no one else could tell. He always seemed to enjoy that part too, however.

It would be a long time before she ever figured it out.


	12. Bedroom Hymns

**A/N:** A huge thanks to my new beta, thepurplewombat! Also, fair warning: welcome to another smut chapter. It's been a while.

* * *

The loft was exactly as Severus left it. He wondered briefly if he really ought to start referring to it as his home, finally, as he placed his traveling bags on the island in the kitchen. It was home, he knew, even as the pang of longing for Kowloon settled in the hollow of his throat. Never let it be said that Severus Snape was as acutely decisive as he liked to pretend to be.

He filled up the kettle from the sink, somehow still preferring the muggle way of brewing tea. It was the small ritual of the thing he liked. Boil water, patience. Drop in tea, ponder eternity. Let it cool, embrace the monotony of time one has no control over. Reap the rewards in varying degrees of sweetness and bitterness.

"You're home."

Bloody-fucking-motherless-cock-sucking-fiendfyre-fuck-hell. He didn't even notice another presence in the loft. He was on a knee taking cover behind the island before he could stop himself. Before the sound of the voice registered with the appropriate receptors in his brain. Light, feminine with a full bodied pitch. Granger.

Granger, with a poorly concealed smile playing across her face. That halo of honey curls framing her face. A slight flush to her cheeks, a laugh in her eyes. "You're getting soft, Snape," she teased.

He huffed, rising back to his full height. He ran his hands along the wood of the island, attempting to bring the adrenaline back down. "You set wards in my loft?"

She nodded. "I knew it was protected, but, you can never be too careful and well…" She shook her head. Her shoulders tensed slightly, and relaxed. She let something go, and he wasn't sure what. "Oh, fuck it."

Fuck it, she said, as she closed the distance between them faster than he anticipated. Her hands cupped his face and her lips were on his before propriety could object. She was earnest, her mouth forcing his open as she rose to the balls of her feet to claim him. Tongue demanding the taste of him. It apparently didn't matter that he was travel worn, smelling vaguely of sweat and foreign soil. She needed something from him, badly, and he wasn't sure he had the power to deny her.

Slender pale hands gripped her by the hips, pulling her away just enough to watch the flush engulf her entire face. Those brown eyes shining with their own dark, wicked thing. She had the look of someone who had been denied oxygen for too long, desperate and almost hungry. There was no time for a role reversal. No time to put each of them in their properly labeled boxes. It terrified him.

Something in his eyes must have answered her own darkness, because she grinned wickedly up at him, closing the distance between their bodies again, hips pinning him against the wood counter. "Fuck it," he growled.

Fuck it, as he let her flood him. Overwhelm his thought patterns and overwrite everything he thought he wanted in a gust of hands, nails, teeth and those god damn hips. He dug short nails into them, the only thing keeping him afloat in the middle of the storm.

She dragged him away from the counter, his feet dancing backward as she nearly slammed him against a wall. His rear smacking against the brick uncomfortably before she grabbed him by the belt loops of his trousers, pulling his hips back to her. The incredibly human response he couldn't have hid if he wanted to drew echoing sighs from the both of them.

"A month. No word." The words a growl, a grunt, an accusation. Loud above the nips at his neck and her hands ripping away his blazer.

He said nothing, remaining pliable in her hands, unsure if he should try and stem the tide or enjoy the process of drowning.

"A month, you bastard. I was starting to think…" She didn't finish the thought. Just shook her head.

Small hands tugged his white shirt free from his trousers and they stilled against the flesh of his stomach. The warmth of his skin seeming to slow her down long enough to think. "You don't get to leave the way you did before, understand?"

The thought that crossed his mind ran him straight through the chest. He didn't want to think, especially about his own demise. Not now. Not with blood loudly pounding in his ears and elsewhere. Not when this beautiful storm had the very real power to wash him away completely.

They stood in the eye of it for a moment. Two. Her eyes trained on the buttons of his shirt, hands splayed against his sides, trapping his slim waist between them. It made his chest hurt, somewhere near the place where the pain for Kowloon settled in. She missed him, and didn't want him to die (again.)

Had anyone ever actually missed him? He was quite sure his mother never did, always giving him the same pained look of resigned grief whenever he returned from Hogwarts. His father sure as hell never had. In his father's eyes, he was just a gaping maw of waste. A walking, talking black hole where money always seemed to disappear to.

 _Had Lily?_

Hermione's hands twined through his hair. He flinched, self- conscious at the state of it. It's current texture embarrassingly familiar to him. She pulled him down by it, bringing his ridiculous nose to hers. "Do you understand me?" She demanded.

He dipped his head slightly.

She smiled at him and let her forehead rest against his. "Good. Now, where was I?"

He stepped away from the wall, a foot coming between hers and pivoted. He slammed her against the wall, holding her chin in his hand to keep her head from meeting the same fate as the rest of her. "Fuck it, I believe?"

She nodded, hands coming back under his shirt to rest at his waist again. "Right, right. Fuck it." She used her hips to push away from the wall, walking him back across the floor. Her mouth working at his with renewed fervor. It was easier now somehow, still hungry, but a touch less frantic.

His knees hit the back of something and with a firm push to his chest, he was down. Long legs splayed as he tipped backward onto the thrice-damned futon. She crawled across him, legs pinning him still with hands firmly planted on his chest. He didn't care that his legs fell asleep as she raked her nails down his sides. As those small hands played at the buttons up his shirt, parted the fabric and just rested on his chest. She breathed in time with the frantic rhythm under her hands

He struggled to find the words in the storm. Snatching the easiest ones he could think of. "I'll take this to indicate that you missed me, Granger?"

She rocked her hips forward, and his brain short circuited.

"Do shut up, Snape."

He nodded, a sheepish smile on his face.

* * *

At some point, he demanded she either stop or finish what she started. Sometime after his hand held hers firmly against his erection and her lips were swollen with mindless needy lust. To her credit, and his own chagrin, she stopped. Growling something about the right time and both of them needing a shower. He despised her self-control. He admired it.

Though he wasn't sure when the last time he had such an enjoyable solo adventure after being wound tighter than a clock spring. The pain of it was exquisite, and he bit back a moan as his hips thrust into his palm. Teeth sinking into his shoulder as he came. The hot water beating a merciful staccato atop his head and down his back.

Severus retrieved the fresh pair of trousers he left on the edge of the sink and threw the towel around his shoulders. He hissed as the sudden change in temperature from outside the bathroom hit him, the steam dissipating in a quick huff with the open door.

He found her curled up on his bed, like a contented cat. Dead center like she owned the damn thing. He hated it. Pale fingers played at the ends of the hair that framed her face. She had fallen asleep, sometime after her own shower and, he hoped, her own release. They had both carried too much.

"I missed you too, pet." The words a quiet whisper.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, playing with her hair. Long enough for his skin and the towel around his neck to grow cold. At some point, she turned her face to his palm and tasted the salt of his skin. He nearly laughed.

"It's in my bag if you want it," she mumbled. Her voice still husky from sleep.

"What is?"

She yawned, stretched, and rolled onto her stomach, making room for him. "My homework."

The smile broke out across his face before he could help himself. "Good girl."

She hummed.

It is said in some mythos, that a feather is about the same weight as the human heart. Severus tested the weight of her words in his hands. Were they the same as her heart, or lighter? He read them as she slept, hand idly trapped in her hair. Some of her days more insightful than others. Some days filled with a reluctance to face the thing that ate at her, and a desire to fling herself at the feet of anything to dull the ache. Other days she was willing to touch it. Willing to face it with a stubborn, resigned courage. To dismantle her own anxieties with bald logic. He filed away her fears, her curiosities, her surprisingly creative scene ideas, away in the box labeled 'Pet' in his head. He made an additional mental note to find an excuse to raid her flat for ideas of items to transfigure.

A small, delicate hand clumsily slipped up this thigh. A dark eyebrow rose as he watched slim fingers, drunk on too little sleep, walk their way upward. They veered out to his hip, stumbled at the waistband of his trousers. A pause, hesitant, before slipping to the skin of his pale waist.

"Have you ever seen the sun?" She asked.

He knew she meant it playfully, but his answer was the same. "Never."

"So the rumors of your vampirism haven't been totally unfounded?"

He scoffed. "Honestly, Granger."

She began noting points in her fingers. "Never sees the sun. Enjoys employing teeth on necks. Has an uncanny ability to billow a cape for dramatic effect. Did we ever see if your reflection is visible?"

He looked down at her, a wicked smirk on his lips. "I believe we tested the mirror theory already. You seemed to rather enjoy it if I recall."

She sputtered. "Quite."

He basked in it, shameless. "And your conclusion?"

Hermione sighed, rolling onto her stomach. "Only human."

"Isn't that enough?" He asked.

There was a note in it, something curious and bitter. She caught it in her hands as she raised herself up and put a finger to his lips.

 _Isn't that enough?_

He didn't expect an answer. He didn't expect her to sprawl across him and drink that note from him until his hands clung to her and his breath came in short bursts. Until war drums beat in his head and the wordless pleas flowed from him like water.

"It's always been enough, Severus." A hushed confession.

He stilled beneath her. Eyes focused sharply on the curve of her swollen lip, unable to meet her eyes. The world was far too big and he was much too small.

Severus Snape was never what one would call a man of god. Filthy with sin from the moment he first sucked air into his lungs. The product of at least seven of St. Paul's grave mortal sins, and any number of venial. He knew he was damned the moment his foot hit the flagstones of the crumbling Saint Mary's Cathedral in Cokeworth. Breath burning in his throat, heart pounding in his ears as he ducked through the heavy wooden doors to avoid his neighborhood tormentors. He gazed into the faces of the statues of saints, some lost in the throes of divine passion, others in seraphic pain. They frightened him then, though he never did come to understand why.

Father Barltrop found him hiding between the pews. A dirty little boy, shaking and sticky with sweat, reeking of neglect and something just north of fear. When the kindly old preacher spoke of god and saints and heaven, Severus wondered briefly if such things were really meant for him. Forgiveness, grace, the golden gates of heaven, all seemed too good to be true. And of course, he was right. For as every preacher proselytizes of heaven, he must also remind the flock of the horrors that await them in the sulfur pits of hell. It was the first time he could recall feeling small. He hated it.

It wasn't long after that he first spotted Lily Evans, all pale legs and peals of laughter that sounded like bells, playing with her sister in that shabby playground. Eyes that shone with something so brilliant he had to look away. She was like looking into the faces of those horrifying saints. He knew then, the true face of heavenly grace.

Severus blinked, black eyes coming back to focus on those deep pools of honey. Even in the darkness, he searched for the burgundy undertones that couldn't hide a thing even if they wanted to. He read a mild fear, a warm curiosity, a heavy worry, and something else he couldn't quite find the words for. Her fingers played around the sharp angles of his jaw. She tilted her head in an unspoken question. Had she said too much? Was she out of line? Had he heard the whisper of his name across her lips?

He swallowed hard.

Her eyes softened then, and she let her fingers trace the line of his jaw, to the jagged raised skin of the scar on his neck. Down the center of his chest and past the second scar toon the right. He sighed as she marked him with featherweight traces of her fingertips and nails. Runes he couldn't recognize, spellwork so delicate he wasn't sure it was real, but it lit up his nerves like a Christmas tree. Every touch cut him to the quick. He bit back her name more than once, nearly swallowing his own tongue. Desperate to maintain some control; to keep her out of the deep recesses of the hollow place she had begun to occupy in his chest.

She kissed a trail of fire down his stomach and he swore, a gentle thing under his breath. She laughed with it, the cheeky little snit. Her pert little nose grazing the strained mound of his trousers and he bit back a moan.

"You don't have to-"

Hermione cut him off with a laugh, shaking curls out of her face. "If you think this is for you, you are entirely mistaken." Something deep rumbled in her voice, something needy and hungry and far more attractive than he was prepared for.

She released him from his cloth confines and held him firmly with elegant fingers, eyes fixed on his face as she did it. Annotating every motion of her hands with its corresponding reaction. Watching as his jaw clenched and his lip curled in a snarl. He was the splintering cracks before breaking. A moth pinned under glass.

When she tasted the salt of him, he was quite sure he found the gates of heaven somewhere behind his eyes. Her fingers drummed delicate prayers along the length of him as her devilish tongue worked its way around the tip. The agonizing, feather light strokes of her lips sent his hips arching off the bed.

He hissed when she finally took him into her mouth. A slow, sharp intake of breath that sent his head reeling. The warmth of her mouth and those blasted cognac honey eyes that just kept fucking watching him. He closed his own, unable to confront the grace in them. Unable to look into the face of angelic scrutiny. It took the last scraps of his control not to watch her through heavy dark lashes. Instead, he went inward, drifting along with the strokes of her mouth. The feel of those silken curls between her fingers. He was entirely Id as she worked.

She was eager, and he was desperate. It was an intoxicating mix, and he held her down for a moment, two, three. He nearly cried out when he hit the back of her throat, a low growl his only gift to her. She struggled slightly under his grip before she tapped his thigh, signaling a need for air. He sighed and finally looked into her face. She was red from the lack of air and the force of his hands on the back of her head. An unreadable smirk playing on her lips as she continued to toy with him.

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Shut up," she said and took the full length of him again. Eagerly taking him to the hilt, working him until her own gag reflex became too much to ignore.

"Fuck, Granger."

She came back up for air, a shameless grin on her face, an elegant eyebrow arched in a mocking question. "Is that all it takes?"

He nodded, an unintelligible sigh of agreement rumbled in his chest.

"Good. Let go," she commanded.

It didn't take long once she found the right combination to send him tumbling over the edge. He tried to raise her head, to give her time to be ready for it, but she was too deep in her work. Steadily working her mouth around him, her hands keeping pace as his hips rose again and again to meet her, the rhythm needy and frantic.

He was nerve endings and fire. He was delivered and damned. He was pain and need and sweet mother have mercy on our ruined broken souls, this girl will be the absolute end of everything. With that beatific mouth that seemed genetically engineered to bring him to rapture and those god damn eyes that burned every inch of him they gazed upon. This beautiful wicked perfect pet with those blasted too-small hands going frantic and erratic and please please please god oh god-

He breathed.

He howled hymns as he spilled into her, back arched. She dug nails into his hips to keep him still as she drank him in.

Sweet mercy, but she was celestial sent to destroy him.

She released him with an audible pop, a finger coming to wipe the last of him from her lips. She kissed him, and he drank down the strange taste of him on her lips. Something masculine and familiar tinged with a sweetness from her he couldn't quite place. They tasted profane and glorious.

She pulled back enough to watch the blush on his cheeks and the boyish sheepish grin in his eyes.

"Holy hell, Granger."

She laughed.

* * *

 **A/N:** *phew* That was an adventure. Thanks again to thepurplewombat for taking the time to beta this for me, and agreeing to do more. I am still getting used to writing smut, and I hope you all enjoy it. I had quite a bit of fun with this one.


	13. Homecoming

"Ms. Granger, a pleasure as always. Please, have a seat."

Kingsley Shacklebolt always cut an impressive figure. Simple, but finely tailored robes draped impeccably over a tall, imposing figure. Fine features seemingly not aged since the day she first laid eyes on them. He was a power plant in the middle of a zen garden; a finely tuned machine. Years ago, he had winked at her. It was a small thing, in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Just before the celebration dinner the night she and Ron had become Prefects. He brushed past her in the doorway as she was running out to get something from upstairs, offering the gesture in what she deemed was congratulations. For a total of thirty seconds, roughly the time it took for her to leap up the stairs to her room, she had fallen madly in love with him, and back out of it again.

She smiled at the memory as she sat across from him now, small hands folded on her lap over a thick green Ministry folder. "Thank you, Minister."

"Hermione, please." He let out a good-natured sigh laced with mock exasperation.

She shifted, nervous. Her teeth went for her lip, and she stopped herself, licking them instead self-consciously. "Kingsley, I'm sorry, I have news, and I'm not at all sure what we're going to do about it."

Dark eyes darted to the folder on her lap and back to her face. "Give me the short version."

She inhaled. "The Order's Snape intelligence was wrong."

If he was surprised, he didn't show. "Why not go to McGonagall? She is technically the Field General."

"Because it's going to become your problem...Snape is alive, Kingsley."

The surprise painted itself clearly on his face. Torn somewhere between joy and deep remorse. "Merlin. What? Why? How did you? What?" He ran his hand up his forehead, taking off his hat in one smooth motion. "Merlin."

She sighed. "I know."

"Ok. Start from the beginning."

He listened intently as she spoke a deeply censored version. A version where she wasn't spending 2-4 nights a week in a loft alone with him. A version where she wasn't on her knees desperate for those blasted hands in her hair. A version where he wasn't this massive, silent shadow darkening the corners of her life.

"This whole time and no one else knows?" Kingsley asked finally. He glanced down as she placed the green folder on the table.

She watched those large ebony hands flip the folder open and spread the top few sheets of parchment across his desk. "No. I felt like I owed him that much." Not a lie. It made her feel better.

"He actually wants to come back? After everything? This world was never kind to him…" Kingsley trailed off, eyes skimming across the pages.

Hermione shrugged. "He said it would make things easier for him, but-"

Kingsley glanced up at her, waiting patiently for her to continue.

"I think he's just homesick."

"Homesick?"

She nodded. "How would you feel if you were forced to leave behind everything you knew after you sacrificed literally everything to save it? How would anyone feel?"

When she put it that way it seemed so damn simple.

"I forget sometimes, that Severus is human."

Something bristled in her. Something old and deep and possessive. "He has always been. He was just great at hiding it under a thick layer of arsehole."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Perhaps."

She inhaled, willing the anger back down. "So what do we do?" Caution tape bound each word.

Kingsley paused for a moment to consider, fingers drummed on the edge of his desk. "We call a meeting at the Field Commander's office. We let her see him. We owe her that. He owes her that."

Hermione swallowed. "He isn't going to do well if we all bombard him at once."

Kingsley shook his head. "No, not everyone. Just her, and Dumbledore."

"It would be too much to ask to have Dumbledore stay in his portrait here wouldn't it?"

Kingsley barked a mirthless laugh. "Do you honestly think he'd listen to any of us?"

She sighed. The miserable old bastard was nothing but memories, oil paint, and impertinence.

* * *

Snape's rage was a beautiful thing to watch. It burned low and quiet, starting in the slight tremble of his fingers as he gripped the wooden countertop. It showed in the spots of pale pink that painted its way across those arrowhead cheekbones. In the deep tenor of his voice, it hid behind the tar-thick syllables. "You want me to go where, Granger?"

Hermione held up her hands, showing she bared no wand or weapon. "Kingsley thinks you need to meet with McGonagall. Do a slow public roll out starting with The Order. The ones we know won't leak. We're prepared to force oaths until you're ready to go break it to the public at large. Kingsley...he wants to do right by you. He really does."

She could almost hear the mental gymnastics. The Ulterior Motives Still Rings. The Parallel Bars of Paranoia. The Vault to Conclusions. "Shacklebolt has never gone out of his way to stop me, I suppose." He relented through gritted teeth.

She let out a small breath she didn't realize she was holding. "I know it is asking a lot of you. I don't particularly want to go back either, quite frankly. If you'd like, I can work up a series of vectors to see if it's necessary?" A needless gesture. They both knew this was necessary.

He eyed her for a moment. His gaze like lead.

"So when do we go?" she squirmed with the question. It had cost her something to ask it.

"Come here, pet?"

The question in it made her pause. A small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. It was flexibility. Not a command, but a request. She padded around the island and stood before him, hands loosely clasped behind her back. "Sir?"

"If I brought you with me, would you obey every order I gave you?"

She tilted her head, considering. "Am I to be Pet while we are out, or Granger?"

"You will be allowed to act as you see fit until I give you a direct order."

"That...may be confusing, sir." Questions burned in her esophagus, acidic and heavy. She swallowed most of them. "Why?"

"Because I desire it."

The words were heavy in her ears. Too much unreadable under the surface. The conclusions she could reach too small to be accurate. She wanted to ask more. To ask if he needed it. If she didn't give it, would he refuse? She sat with the answer and eventually, shrugged. "Yes, Sir," she said finally.

"We leave tomorrow. Now come."

She padded across the loft behind him, just a step behind.

* * *

Hermione always hated coming back. Hogwarts was a place forever tilted on its axis in the wrong direction. The walls seemed to sigh with the power of too many of its dead charges; as if it had never quite finished mourning. Too many faint traces of blood on the stone steps, too many lives lost. Many of those lives had graced these same stone walls with equal amounts of innocence. The injustice of it hung to the castle-like brittle ivy.

That's what they had been then; children. The three of them forced to grow up too fast. A boy asked to save the world, another asked to carry his weight, and a girl so desperate for external validation she would follow both, willingly, lovingly, into the Hellmouth. They made a heck of a trio, gilded as they were. Gifted with an uncanny luck.

She trailed a step and a half behind Snape, both out of propriety and the struggle to keep up with his long, angry strides.

Severus hated coming back. Hogwarts a place of too many shadows. Each of his former masters had left their brands on him, and each one had damned him to those stone walls for whatever reasons. Despite this, it was his real home. It welcomed him back night after night for years. The stone never judging, just bearing silent witness to his sins. He gave it the last of his innocence, and when he was made Headmaster, it gave him its secrets. His last gift to it was supposed to have been his life. It kept its vigil to him, and the others all this time, just the same.

The stone was mostly new in the entrance to the castle. The gates and the stone walkway having been the first thing rebuilt soon after the war ended. The entranceway finished a year later. New, for a place like this, was relative. The grounds felt as though they were still trying to become accustomed to its renovations. Power danced across his skin as they crossed the threshold to the castle. It was a deep sort of magic, one he never quite understood. Something more than just magic. It remembered him from that time, and greeted his power like an old friend. He brushed his knuckles along the stone railing, forcibly reminding both himself and the castle, of his own existence. Neither had anticipated his survival. Neither had expected his return.

The castle was no longer his. He couldn't quite feel all the threads of the people that lived within its walls anymore. He knew they were there, a tapestry of thin golden tendrils, feelings just out of reach to him. That power now rested with the current headmistress. She would know they were there. She would know their hesitance. She would know of something more but she would mistake it for something else. Neither of them were ever quite as good at reading the tapestry as Dumbledore had been.

"Fortuna Major." Hermione's voice was small, a strange note to hear outside of the loft.

"The old bat has a security problem, recycling passwords."

"Do you ever stop, sir?" She asked, the smile evident in her voice.

"No," He replied, a scowl plain in his.

Ah, familiar footing. It was a small comfort to both of them.

They walked the spiral stone staircase to the headmaster's office in silence. She reached a hand back and brushed fingertips across the hem of his sleeve. Those old sleeves with their tight cuffs and so many buttons. They weren't quite as they had been, but they were close enough to fill her chest with a strange weight. She wasn't sure if she enjoyed it or not.

She expected him to huff in protest. Instead, he let his own fingers brush hers. A sign of weakness. It had cost him something to give it to her.

Their debts were beginning to pile up, he mused.

As she pulled away, she wondered if he was keeping a ledger.

Hermione reached the top of the stairs, not daring to turn around to look at him. She raised her hand to the door and paused.

"Open it, Granger," he said simply.

She complied.

Hermione remembered this office from years before. The look of it in Harry's memories, with its glittering, tinkly dark detectors and pensieve in the cabinet. She remembered it after the war, most traces of Dumbledore wiped away, leaving the room sparse and cold. It looked nothing like either time before. The portraits where the same, the faces of the past headmasters all at attention, staring at them as they entered the room. Among them, a single canvas void of a figure, the thin layer of dark oil paints creating a strange void. A large mahogany desk sat dead center, two high backed chairs stationed in front of it. Several glass cabinets that had once been filled with dark detectors now held a healthy assortment of mementos. Photographs, small nick nacks, a Remembrall, a familiar looking Deluminator, and a host of others Hermione couldn't make out. The floor was lined with several tartan rugs, corners overlapping at odd angles. Hermione smiled. It felt like McGonagall's old office.

McGonagall stood facing the window, hands clasped tightly around her forearms behind her back. She was stiff, shoulders ramrod straight, deathly silent.

Hermione opened her mouth to make with the pleasantries, but as Snape entered her peripheral vision, she thought better of it. She watched him, his face carefully blank. Neutral, nearly pleasant to the untrained eye. He was as stiff as she was, chest barely moving with his breath.

The silence hung heavy around them, filling the negative space. It was cloying, cold and bitter. She wanted to do something, anything to bridge the chasm of silence between them. She dared not look to him for guidance and dared not presume she understood the Headmistress' feelings enough to make something about this comfortable.

Nothing about this was comfortable. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be.

McGonagall let out a breath. Finally, the words came. They were strained. "The last time I set eyes on you, Severus Snape, your blood was oh my hands. You were a breath away from death. 9 years, Severus, is a long time."

He blinked, unsure where this was going.

She turned around, her gaze bearing down on him, uncomfortably tight and heavy. Green eyes familiar. He looked just left of her eyes to the wisps of grey hair tucked behind her ear, unable to take the full force of them.

"I drove you from this castle to your death, and I carried you from that shack, and for what? For you to end up right back where you bloody started?" her voice rose slightly, shrill. Her fists balled into the fabric of her pale grey robes.

He looked away, unable to hide the confusion creeping behind his eyes.

Something seemed to shift in McGonagall, and she let go of her robes, shoulders relaxing a fraction. "You never figured it out, did you? You, sharp, clever little thing you are. Really?"

"It is unwise to ask questions when you find yourself not dead, when, by all rights, you should have been very dead." His words were tight, notes on a guitar strung too tight.

Hermione looked at them, utterly confused. "Headmistress…"

McGonagall scoffed then. "Honestly, dear, when will you start calling me Minerva?"

Hermione looked down at her shoes for a moment, the scene entirely too strange.

The older woman huffed again. "Well, are you two going to stand there like prisoners in front of your prison officer, or are you going to sit?" With that, she finally stepped away from the window, around her desk. She approached him slowly, hands hesitating for a moment before gently grasping him by the shoulders. He stiffened, even more, a near impossible feat. She chuckled. "I am sorry to see you here, but glad to know you are alive," She said before dragging him into her arms for an embrace.

He smelled tobacco and peonies, comforting, familiar. Something dropped in him then, like a stone across a stagnant lake. He wrapped his slim arms around her and gripped the back of her robes. He had missed her. She was home.

Hermione looked away, anywhere to avoid being a witness the naked intimacy she did not understand. She thought they had hated each other. That McGonagall would point her wand at his throat and threaten him as she had all those years ago. There was too much here, and it was far too heavy. She looked up into the gallery of Headmasters and noticed many of them also had the good decency to look away. Dumbledore's frame appeared empty but for a small portion of his periwinkle robes discreetly peeking in the corner. Hermione nearly signed in relief. The last thing any of them needed right now was to be under sharp twinkly blue over blasted half moons. She shifted where she stood, uncomfortable. There was too much and it was too heavy.

They broke apart, and Hermione kept her gaze trained on the Headmaster's gallery, silently begging to be allowed out of the room. She couldn't bring herself to look at them. Not when everything was still a raw lie.

"Sit, Severus. Hermione." McGonagall offered.

Hermione glanced over to Severus. Pleading silently, desperate to avoid as much of the emotional muck they were sure to rake through as possible.

He gave a small shake of his head. "Leave us, Granger. You will be summoned when needed."

Hermione did her best to school her features and offered a curt nod. "Yes, sir." She turned on her heel and saw herself out of the office.

Safely on the other side of the door, she bent over, wrapping her arms around her knees, taking several deep gulping breaths. It was much too heavy and she was much too small.

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry for the wait. Work got the better of me over the fall.


	14. Tobacco Kills

Minerva McGonagall watched Hermione leave the room, and turned a delicate arched grey eyebrow at the man sitting across from her. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Opting instead to slip her wand from her sleeve and transfigure a small silver box on her desk back into a pack of Benson & Hedges Gold. The large 'TOBACCO KILLS' label across the box worn down by mindless thumbing. She slid the pack across her desk over to Severus, lighting her own with a bit of wordless magic.

Severus chuckled. "You still smoke these god awful things?" He slipped a cigarette from the pack and mirrored her.

"Better than those damn menthols you used to smoke," She said, slipping the pack back to its place.

He looked up into the Gallery of Headmasters. Some looked at the two in a wistful sort of way only oil on canvas could achieve. Others looked away, unable to face the two of them back here together, or still finding the prospect of smoking in the Headmaster's office too distasteful. He let his head dip back, cigarette dangling from thin lips, catching the peek of periwinkle at the corner of the seemingly single empty frame. "The old bastard seems to have gotten smarter since he died."

She inhaled. "Do not conflate intelligence with a supremely developed sense of self-preservation. Which is more than I can say for you, young man."

He didn't have a retort for that, instead opting to nervously thumb the filter of his cigarette.

"How is Xi?" She asked when the silence got too thick.

The look of shock and the bitter resignation of realization that painted its way across his face made her smile. "As violent and brilliant as ever. How did you talk her into it?"

"It," Minerva mused. "You mean smuggling you out of the country half dead? I didn't have to. I told her I had something of great value. Xi never turns down a rare ingredient, you know that."

Something about the statement made the sharp planes of his cheeks heat up. A twist of his lips in a sneer his only reply.

"She owed me a favor. I didn't want you to die."

"Is it really that simple?" He asked, the words bitter and sharp.

"Is it that hard to believe someone here wanted something better for you?" She countered.

"Yes."

Something old and hurt mewled in her chest, and she looked away from him. The absolute certainty in his words still too cutting. She exhaled, a pale plume of smoke rising to the ceiling. "We all played our roles. I know what I did, and what that meant to you. I did it regardless because it was all part of the plan." She returned to the study of his face again, her voice slow and quiet. "Dumbledore was dead. I had already taken your home from you. I didn't have the heart to carry out the rest. I was weak."

"You were. And now here we are," It was an accusation.

"Did you really want to die?" She asked.

He paused for a moment, considering. "At the time, I think I did. After, I wish I had. Now? I am unsure."

"Well then, you have the luxury of choice now. You're welcome."

A small smirk played at the corners of his mouth. All he ever really wanted was a choice.

* * *

Hermione wandered the halls of Hogwarts. The stone in her chest kept her steps slow, deliberate. Classes were due to start in the coming days, filling the halls with a strange pressure of potential energy; like the air before a storm. She hated the feeling. She loved it. It made her nostalgic and anxious. She ran her hands along the stone railing, letting the nearest staircase lead her upwards, and then back down, making her way back out to the grounds. Everything retained that same two-degrees-off-familiar feeling. It sent her gut to twisting.

The greenhouses stood to the east of the castle, shining beacons of modern progress against their medieval backdrop. All seven having been redesigned and refurbished to more modern specifications. The tall glass structures glinted in the afternoon light. She cupped her hands and peered inside, finding what she was looking for by sheer luck of the draw.

"Professor Longbottom?" She called, doing her best to announce her presence before she entered.

Neville Longbottom jumped anyway. He very almost always did, mostly out of habit. "That-Hermione is that you?" His voice rang through the seamless glass structure, hands wrist deep in soil. Broad shoulders hunched over a long planter on a workbench.

She smiled, entering. His greenhouses a love letter to his passion. His garden tools lay scattered across the workbench, a basket of Puffapods at his feet. The smell of fresh dirt and moss hung heavy. "I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your work, Professor, but I just had to come see you."

He laughed, dusting his hands down the front of his apron. Eyes crinkled in a smile. He scooped her up into his arms, lifting her slightly off her feet. She wondered if he ever got tired of showing off just how much he had grown up. She decided he had earned it, and more. Her hands ruffled his blonde hair, an old familiar gesture, one she brought herself to sometime after the war. "What on earth are you doing here? Ministry business?"

It was close enough to the truth that she nodded. "You'll be hearing about it soon enough, I'm sure." Another not-lie. She was getting better at those.

"Does Hagrid know you're here? He would be deeply upset if you didn't stop by for a cuppa."

She shook her head. "He was next on my list. I haven't seen you in so long, I thought it best to find you first."

Neville pulled a stool out from under the bench and she took it gladly. The joy of her surprise appearance seemed to be fade quickly, an almost pained look crossing his face as he looked at her. "I-well-I saw The Prophet-and-well, we all know its utter rubbish, even with Ginny writing for it-but-well-is everything ok? Are you ok?"

Her gaze softened and she drummed a nervous beat across her knees. She didn't want to lie to him. Taking metal stock for the first time in weeks, she realized she felt fine. Every single time someone asked the question, it felt even more fine, bordering even on ok. The pain in her chest was less, often being curbed by the salt and papercuts that were Severus Snape. She took that with her everywhere. It only dawned on her now looking into Neville's still too-innocent face. "I'm fine I suppose. I'm an old pro at dodging the press at this point." She shrugged. It felt better skirting the truth. "How's Luna?"

He smiled at the mention. It made her chest tight. "She's fine. Got an owl just a few days ago. She's gearing up to hike across Turkey in search of an-" He paused for a moment, attempting to wrap the word around his teeth. "Azmych? But the blasted things are supposed to make people lose their way. I'm not sure how she plans to do this, but she's enjoying her trip just the same." He shook his head, a bemused smirk on this face.

Hermione felt the tightness in her chest turn to something dark and twisted. It hurt, seeing him so happy. Something between bitterness and envy. She didn't like it. She smiled through it. "Oh Luna." the words were wistful and very near to patronizing.

Neville didn't seem to catch it, or else he truly didn't care. He shrugged. "It makes her happy. Her research has been leaning more into dark creatures lately, so who knows."

They made their way to Hagrid's hut, chatting amicably along the way. Hagrid swept her up in a comforting embrace at the sight of her, whisking them both inside for tea and cakes.

Hermione had always enjoyed Hagrid's hut. Having spent so much time there over her years at Hogwarts, it felt like a second home. Even after she had helped him refurbish it several years ago, they had managed to restore a great deal of the oversized coziness that she loved.

She sat crossed legged on an oversized window bench, hands wrapped around a massive mug of tea, black. A single large sugar cube bobbing at the surface.

"How's yer work at the ministry coming, Hermione?" Hagrid asked, sliding a plate of rock cakes across the table towards Neville.

She smiled, happy to have a thing she didn't have to lie about. "I was finally able to get a hearing on the House Elf reclassification."

"and?" Hagrid asked, voice eager.

She paused for dramatic effect, enjoying watching the older man squirm with excitement. "We did it."

Hagrid let out a hearty woop. Neville's eyes went wide, a lopsided smirk dancing across his face. "Well I'll be damned. That's going to be a kick in the robes to some of the old pureblood families." The words bubbled over each other in a laugh.

"Does 'at mean the Hogwarts elves will all be removed?" Hagrid asked. "Most of 'em have never left the grounds-they may not be able to survive on their own."

"I doubt things will change much to start. The important thing now is they have a choice. If they wish to leave their current circumstances, they can now without fear."

"You should talk to McGonagall. I bet she would be willing to help. The Governors wouldn't dare argue with her, especially over good press." Neville offered.

She nodded. "Excellent idea! And really, most of them probably won't even ask for pay. But it will give them a safe place to work without any backlash from witches and wizards who will, undoubtedly, be rather furious with the loss of their free labor."

The two men shared a glance, the knowing clear in the negative space. "You may want 'ter think about how to protect these poor-well I guess they're beings now I 'spose-if they leave their homes. Imagine some the old families not taking it well." Hagrid's warning was gentle, but clear.

She looked down into her tea. She hadn't considered that. "You're right, Hagrid." The tea in her hands came under close scrutiny as she considered his words. "Hagrid, would you help me?"

He blinked. "How?"

She smiled, a wicked little thing. A thing full of brewing ideas. "We can form a task force! Maybe do surveys before we announce changes to law? Oh! Or perhaps-"

Her conceptual flurry was interrupted by a loud POP. One of the house elves from the castle appeared atop Hagrid's large table. It's watery pale eyes blinked a few times, before bowing in deference. "Pardon my interuptings Mr. Hagrid, but Ms. Granger and Professor Longbottom is being summoned back to the castle by the Headmistress," It's squeaky voice like a child's toy.

The cracked thing in her chest tightened. She didn't want to go back there. To have to reconcile the mental images of them distant and cold and adult with that naked display of intimacy. She glanced over at Neville, and something cold ran through her. She smiled over it, syrupy. "Duty calls. But seriously, Hagrid. Please consider it?"

Hagrid nodded, quite unsure of what he may have gotten himself into.

* * *

"You do realize this is going to be a disaster, don't you?" Severus said as he put out his cigarette in the silver ashtray. With a twist of his wrist, he vanished the filter.

"It won't be fun, that's for sure," Minerva replied, motioning the same. A tap of her wand and the offending tray and pack of cigarettes were returned to their a silver box and red rubber ball camouflage.

A loud POP interrupted his thoughts. "Headmistress, Professor and the Miss are just outside."

She glanced over at Severus, an odd look in her eye. Somewhere between terror and unmitigated courage. "You sure you don't want me to bind him in oath first?"

He nodded. "It should be his choice. I've put the boy through enough already."

A bone-deep sadness clouded the terror. It was old and arthritic, one she often felt whenever she looked at Neville a little too long. The young man had his share of visible scars to show for his final year as a student, but the marks that rested on his soul were just as jarring. Plain enough for her to see on that golden tapestry the castle showed her, her privilege as headmistress. Jagged and black, sometimes writhing, but still more often than not. Sutured together by bands of pale, glittering blue. Luna had done the boy quite a bit of good, even if no one else understood it. She wanted to say something, but lost the words at the tip of her tongue. Maybe Severus should carry that weight. Maybe.

She turned back to the house elf. "Thank you, Sootie. You can let them in."

* * *

The sound of blood rushing in her ears was deafening. Hermione didn't like the beating of the thing in her chest, frantic. Little rabbit heart caught in a fox's mouth. She hated the sweaty palms and the shrill, manic sort of laugh that tumbled through her when Neville had asked if this was about the business she was on from the ministry.

"I suppose we'll find out in a moment." The laugh was glittering glass shards.

Neville tilted his head, considering her for a moment.

"Whatever it is, I'm not sure what-"

The door opened, and McGonagall beckoned them inside.

Neville took a step. Two. Three.

His foot hadn't quite hit the ground when he bellowed. A dying animal sort of sound. Anguished and furious and oh so terribly confused.

Severus looked away from the boy, no longer a boy.

Hermione stood frozen behind Neville, desperate to comfort her friend, unsure what protocol dictated. She was too small and this room was far too vast. Packed with those 3 other bodies, far too close. Too far away. She reached out anyway, fingers twitching. Desperate to keep him grounded, to save her drowning friend.

"YOU SHOULD BE DEAD!" Neville's voice cracked around the words. "WHY ARE YOU HERE? HOW DARE YOU."

"Professor Longbottom, please."

He shook his head. "No. No this can't be."

Something in Severus ached to react. To sneer. To snipe at the pathetic lack of control. He focused on the twitch of Hermione's fingers and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Longbottom."

Neville looked back to Hermione. "You knew? You knew he was alive and you didn't warn me first?"

She shook her head. "I'm so sorry, Neville."

Neville looked to the threads of the tartan rug. Fingers trembled for a moment before curling into a fist. He shot out quickly, too fast for Hermione to stop him. His fist connected with one of those sharp cheekbones. The connecting thud of flesh to flesh made her chest ache and her stomach flip. She wished he had punched her instead. A pain she could contend with.

"That was for letting the Carrows have us."

"That's quite enough, Professor Longbottom," McGonagall asserted, but the words rang hollow, even in her own ears.

Neville threw up his arms. Legs pacing in a small circle. "Fine. Fine. I've had my say."

It took a few more moments before they were able to explain anything. They let him be angry, be heartbroken. They let him roll his eyes and curse things Hermione didn't even know you could curse. He asked if this was why she left Ron, for some new pity project. She took that knife to the side and shook her head. The timing was wrong, but the accusation was close enough to vital organs to worry her. He apologized nearly as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Something in Severus flinched at it. It was close enough to vital organs to worry him.

Finally, Neville asked why.

"I racked up a lot of debts, my boy. Unfortunately, you all have to repay them for me."

That voice.

That blasted, twinkly, bluebell voice. That purple velvet and silver glittering star voice. That voice of forgiveness, of grace and damnation.

Severus ground his teeth at the sound as he looked up. Eyes resting on oiled blue looking over silver half-moon spectacles. Something in his gaze made the portrait flinch, just a little. "Dumbledore. Of course now is when you show your damnedable face, isn't it?"

"I'm sorry, dear Severus." Dumbledore had the good sense to look mildly abashed.

"Did you know about this, Headmaster? Was this part of the plan?" Neville asked. A desperate plea.

Dumbledore shook his head. "No. By all rights, he should be dead. But he's not, and we can't go around punishing him for that." A note in his voice was discordant.

"Dumbledore, you forget your place on that bloody wall." McGonagall nearly growled with it.

The portrait closed his eyes, chastised.

"I racked up a lot of debt, Mr. Longbottom. Nearly all of that debt rests with Severus."

"Yeah, yeah we know the story," Neville admitted.

"Then you know why I'm here," Severus offered.

"You think you deserve a life here? After all you did?"

"Neville!" Hermione began to protest, but Severus gave her a look. Something cold and demanding. An order, and not a flexible one.

Severus shook his head. "Not particularly, no."

"Then why are you here?"

It took every single ounce of self-control not to look at her. He didn't know why he wanted to look at her, but he wanted her to see it when he finally said the words. "Because I wanted to come home, Longbottom." The words were expensive, heavy things. Precious Gems. Dragon gold. The last in his pocket.

They brought Neville up short. He sat with them for what felt like centuries.

The air heavy with those words, and the souls in the room. Dumbledore had wracked up a lot of debt, and most of it sat with the life if the tall, dark, slender man in the room. They were all still paying for Dumbledore's sins. Neville could admit that much to himself.

Finally, Neville spoke again. The words small, shaky things. The outlines of them barely defined. "I had forgiven you, you know. We all did, at some point. We knew what the Carrows had planned. McGonagall told us you managed to stop the worst of it…" His words trailed for a moment, lost. "...Though really, if what we had wasn't the worst of it, I can't imagine what they would have done without you." Something very much like shame rolled its way through Neville's body.

Severus watched it crawl over his skin. He knew it too well, the prickling heat of it, from toes to nose.

Neville looked to Hermione, and then to McGonagall. "What is the plan then?" he sighed.

* * *

 **A/N:** Someday I'll learn to write every day like my professors told me to.

This one was rather tricky for me, but I think I managed to pull it off. As much as I want these two to live in a world where it's just the two of them, I can't bring myself to do it. There are too many other wonderful characters I've been dying to play with.

As always, thank you for still reading, and for your insane amount of patience for this work. Comments are loved and keep me motivated. Crit makes me better. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review it so far. They really do mean the world to me.


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